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THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK ■ BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



The 

Aftermath of Battle 

WITH THE RED CROSS IN FRANCE 



BY 
EDWARD D. TOLAND 

WITH A PREFACE BY 
OWEN WISTER 



N^m f ark 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1916 



AU rights reserved 



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Copyright, 1916, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped Published February, 1916. 



Nariwoob l^vtiz : 
Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



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FEB 3 1916 



PREFACE 

MOST of these pages following are, 
like the photographs which go with 
them, torn fresh and hot, so to speak, from 
the diary of a young American, just as he 
jotted them down day by day in the war- 
hospitals of France. 

In those hospitals, from September, 1914, 
into February, 1915, with other young 
volunteers, many of them Americans also, 
he served the wounded Germans and Allies. 
He carried them upstairs and down, or in 
from the rain, he assisted at operations, he 
held basins, he gave chloroform, he built the 
kitchen fire, he pumped the water, he was 
chauffeur, forager, commissariat, he helped 
in what ways he could, as he was ordered, 



vi PREFACE 

and also as his own intelligence prompted 
in the not infrequent absence of orders. 
He saw the wounded die, he saw them get 
well, and he tells about them, their suffer- 
ing, their courage, their patience. He 
records one day, among other incidents, 
that "when we got to the Hospital we cut 
the clothes off most of the men and I tied 
them up for storage. While I was doing 
this for one of the Scots (of the Black 
Watch) who had a bullet through his 
chest ... he said, 'Will ye let me have a 
look at those kilts .^' I gave him the kilts 
and continued tying up his clothes. When 
I looked up he was folding them with his 
one arm, as carefully as a woman tucking her 
baby to sleep; 'see that they're not mussed, 
will ye?' he said. . . ." 

In the doings caught alive and set down 
here, a glimpse of war as it is, is given us: 



PREFACE vii 

aeroplanes sail by, shells explode and tear 
the earth, loaded trains arrive smelling of 
dead flesh; while, round the wounded and 
the walls which shelter them, life goes on 
with its birthdays and Christmas dinners, 
its diplomats, magnates, spectators passing 
on and off the scene along with doctors, 
surgeons, and trained nurses. 

From this short authentic document a 
long string of morals and conclusions is to 
be . drawn, and these, saving two remarks 
only, shall be left to the reflecting reader. 

First. After the brief introduction of the 
diary, wherein the writer narrates his 
voyage in the steerage to Liverpool, one 
is plunged instantly into the French chaos. 
As page succeeds page, written without 
art, yet with the efl'ect of high art, with 
the effect (for example) of De Foe's ac- 
count of the Plague, the reader ceases to 



viii PREFACE 

be looking at a picture, he is himself in 
the picture, its terrific realities surround 
him as if he were walking among them. 
Many such pages, most of them still un- 
published, have come from soldiers and 
other participants in the Great Convulsion. 
It is one of the several marked phenom- 
ena of the Great Convulsion that it causes 
people who are not trained writers to pro- 
duce pages which have the quality of the 
very greatest literature — of Shakespeare, 
of the Greek Tragedies, of the Old Testa- 
ment. I have seen some fifty letters from 
an American boy in the trenches to his 
parents. Lately I heard read three letters 
equally intimate: one from a French officer, 
telling how he led his men at night in an 
assault on the German trenches; one from 
a young Englishman telling how in his 
aeroplane he chased a Zeppelin through 



PREFACE IX 

the fog by night out over the North Sea; 
and one from an American lady telling 
how she went through and came out of 
the sinking of the Lusitania. Not one of 
these people was a writer: I have seen 
nothing whatever by any professional writer 
on the war that so touches the heights and 
the depths of emotion as did these private 
letters through their elemental, spontaneous 
simplicity. They seemed written not so 
much by men and women as by nature. 
This is one of the things which the Great 
Convulsion does to the human soul; if any 
human soul comes out of it, lives after it 
unchanged for the better — even those who 
walk American streets in safety here, they 
will have missed the greatest spiritual op- 
portunity that will ever meet them in this 
world. 

Second. Throughout the pages of this 



X PREFACE 

diary occur the names of Americans who 
have wholly or in part dedicated them- 
selves to serving their fellow man in the 
Great Convulsion. Whichever of them win 
renown, all who serve faithfully win the 
spurs of moral knighthood. These spurs 
they wear along with Dr. Strong and those 
colleagues of his who rid Servia of pesti- 
lence, or Mr. Hoover who has been a sort 
of godfather to Belgium, and with many 
more. And this host — for a host it is — of 
Americans thus dedicated to service in the 
Great Convulsion, helps to remove the 
stain which was cast over all Americans 
when we were invited to be neutral in our 
opinions while Democracy in Europe was 
being strangled to death. 

Owen Wister. 



CONTENTS 

PART PAGE 

I. Across in the Steerage 3 

II. Majestic Hotel Hospital, Paris, 

September, 1914 19 

III. Harjes Ambulance Corps at Ricque- 

BOURG 89 

IV. Harjes Ambulance Corps at Mont- 

didier 131 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Aftermath of Battle Frontispiece 

Facing page 

Very septic head case 26 

Wounded Cameron Highlander 34 

Another wounded Highlander 38 

Turco with bullet in his chest 48 

Dressing an abdominal case 62 

Operating staff, Majestic Hotel Hospital. ... 70 

Our first convalescents at the Majestic 78 

Our chateau at Ricquebourg 94 

Dressing wounded Senegalis 108 

En route to Montdidier 132 

The author 140 

Refugees from Lassigny 146 

Members of the French Cabinet visiting us . . 154 

A lesson in knitting 160 

Lieut. Bufquin on the road to recovery 162 



zui 



THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 



PART I 



THE 
AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

ACROSS IN THE STEERAGE 

WHEN the war commenced and the 
banking business shut down tem- 
porarily, I found myself with nothing to do. 

In a short time I made up my mind to 
go to Paris; my idea being simply to see 
the excitement and the French people in 
war-time. 

The prospect of an indeterminate holiday 
appealed to me strongly, as four years of 
engineering, and two years in the banking 
business, had given me but little time to 
myself, since leaving Princeton in 1908. 

I decided to cross in the steerage. The 



4 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

idea came from Bishop Brent of the Philip- 
pine Islands, who a year previously had 
given me a description of a trip he took 
in the steerage. Accommodations were 
quickly arranged for, and with most of 
Philadelphia's visible supply of French 
gold strapped to my legs, and wearing my 
City Troop shoes and khaki shirt, I boarded 
the steerage of the S. S. Laconia in New 
York, August 19th, 1914. 

A brief description of the steerage may 
be of interest. My cabin had 6 bunks in 
it, 3 lowers and 3 uppers. The ceiling was 
6}/^ feet high and the room measured 
about 9' X 7'. There were 6 life preservers, 
one under each pillow, 6 hooks on the wall, 
6 towels, 6 straw mattresses and pillows, 
6 rough blankets and that was absolutely 
all. 

This describes the average steerage cabin 



ACROSS IN THE STEERAGE s 

pretty well. They are put wherever space 
will allow, and hold from 2 passengers up 
to 20 or so. 

The dining-room contained long narrow 
tables, bolted to the floor, covered with 
oil-cloth and each seating from 6 to lo on 
a side. The meal hours were as follows: 

Breakfast 6 a. M. 

Dinner Noon 

Supper 5 P- M- 

All the inside deck of the steerage, includ- 
ing the dining-room, halls and cabins, is 
made of some composition that is water- 
proof and is drained so that it can be 
cleaned up by merely turning on the fire 
hose. Everything was kept quite clean 
throughout the entire trip. There were 
about six hundred passengers in the steerage, 
many of whom were going back to join the 
British Army or Navy. 



6 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

We were met at Sandy Hook by a 
British war-ship, the Essex, which escorted 
us until dark. All outside lights on our 
ship were hidden, so each night on deck 
was passed in total darkness. The second 
day out the stacks and forward part of 
the boat were painted to resemble those of 
a Scandinavian vessel. 

I asked some of the stewards about 
previous voyages. One of them said, 
"You're lucky that you are not coming in 
from the Mediterranean with 2,200 of them 
Wops in the steerage! Dirty! It's perfectly 
sickening! Put down a dish of bread in 
front of them and they will all fight for 
it! One fellow he'll grab nearly all! Thinks 
it all they are going to get that day." 

I laughed and said I supposed it was 
pretty bad. 

"Yes," he said. "Why, they don't know 



ACROSS IN THE STEERAGE 7 

what preserves are. They put the bloom- 
ing marmalade in their tea! We used to 
give them pepper and salt to put on their 
prunes. It did not make no difference, 
though, they'd mug it all." 

August 22nd: 

Very cold this morning and a strong 
breeze blowing. Fifty per cent of the steer- 
age are sea-sick. I am wearing my heaviest 
winter clothes. We are sailing far out of 
the usual course. Every night the sun has 
gone down at right angles to our port 
beam, so we are heading nearly due north. 

My fellow passengers seem to get sick 
very easily. The stewards tell me that 
when they have a boat load of Italians, 
Poles, etc., some of them will lie on the 
hatches for three days at a time without 
moving. 



8 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

Calmer this evening and we had a little 
impromptu musicale conducted by Tom, the 
Irishman who plays the fiddle. He worked 
on the streets laying pavement in New 
York City, and has a nice face and a huge 
mustache. The fingers of his hands are 
so thick and calloused I don't see how he 
can play a fiddle, but he does. 

Some evenings we have a pretty fair 
chorus, consisting mostly of the stewards, 
who know all the Music Hall favorites, 
and the instrumental accompaniment is 
augmented by an accordion and a pair of 
bones. 

A young girl is on her way back to Eng- 
land. She has been earning her living by 
cooking. She said, "This is the way I look 
at it. You earn twice as much in America 
and your expenses are twice as much, but 
your savings are twice as much, too. I 



ACROSS IN THE STEERAGE 9 

could never have supported my mother and 
little sister by doing that kind of work in 
England." 

I ask everybody innumerable questions. 

There is a great variety on the boat and 
it is tremendously interesting to observe 
the people. Instincts are at their nakedest 
in this class; there are no studied poses. 
We have one type which is found every- 
where; the tough athletic hero of a co- 
educational high school in the middle west. 
I met him in the lavatory, before breakfast, 
about the third day out, when it was quite 
crowded. 

"Hullo," he said, in a deep loud voice, 
"why, I haven't seen you before!" 

"Well," I replied, "I do not think I 
have seen you either." 

"Why," he said a little non-plussed, 
"I've been making more noise and kicking 



lo THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

up more rumpus than anyone else down 
here!" 

How many people there are, who want 
just this very thing thought of them, but 
how few would frankly admit it. 

Of course, I had both seen and heard 
him, but I couldn't let such an opening 
go by. "Really," I replied, *'I never no- 
ticed you at all." 

Still freezing cold. No one will say where 
we are, but we must be somewhere near 
Greenland. We are going in by the North 
of Ireland and will be escorted to Liverpool 
by some war-ships. 

Approaching Liverpool we went at a 
snail's pace and simply crawled into the 
harbor. They said that it was newly 
mined and that we could not use our screws 
without danger. 

The tipping system on the steerage is 



ACROSS IN THE STEERAGE ii 

simple. A soup plate is passed around the 
table at the last meal. The average con- 
tribution at my table was one shilling per 
capita. My trip from New York to Liver- 
pool accordingly stands me $35.25. 

General confusion and excitement in land- 
ing and getting through the customs. For 
people who know nothing whatever about 
travelling, it is amazing how well they man- 
age to make out. 

I spent the night in Liverpool and on 
taking a walk before going to bed, met 
Alec, the Scot, from Edmonton, and a 
half dozen of his chums, in the station. 
They were taking the 1.15 A. M. express 
North and suggested investigating some of 
the Ale Houses in the vicinity. Alec is a 
nice looking, big, powerful fellow, rather 
retiring and quiet. He is to join the Gordon 
Highlanders. I thought I noticed a sparkle 



12 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

in his eye when I first met him, and as 
we walked down the street arm in arm, 
that he seemed more loquacious than usual. 

He soon said, "I do na talk much except 
when I take a dram. You must excuse 
me, mate." 

I slapped him on the back and told him 
to talk all he wanted. 

We sat down at a table in a small tavern 
where Alec had another dram and then 
made a speech to the company in general, 
about how he had been switched around 
Chicago by the railway and steamship 
agents; swindled by Jew money changers 
and clothing venders; stuck by the hotels; 
misunderstood on account of his accent, 
and in general played for a sucker. His 
descriptions were so funny; were given in 
such a loud voice and with such unique 
phraseology and Scotch accent, that he 



ACROSS IN THE STEERAGE 13 

soon had nearly the entire tavern in hys- 
terics. I wish I could repeat it all. It was 
as good as anything Harry Lauder ever 
turned out. 

From there we went to a dingy sort of 
family place to get something to eat. There 
were a dozen stodgy Liverpool husbands 
and wives sitting about and Alec again 
took the floor, giving a second series which 
was just as funny as the first. There we 
stayed until nearly train time when Alec 
ordered the boy to "bring me a bottle of 
the best Scotch whiskey yeVe got." This 
I managed to have side-tracked, or Alec 
would never have got to Glasgow that night. 
So went the evening and I have seldom 
spent a better one. As we left the tavern 
Alec and Duncan drew me aside. I had 
paid the check at the last place (about 
three shillings). They looked very serious. 



14 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

"YeVe been too generous, let's divide it 
up," said Duncan. "Yes, mate," said 
Alec, "it's uncommon good of ye, but we 
both know ye've been put to an awful ex- 
pense! II 

The time for parting was near at hand, 
and at i A. M. we stood together in the 
street for the last time, our arms around 
each other's shoulders, and sang "Just a 
Wee Doech and Dorris before We Gang 
Awa." Then we separated, never to meet 
again. 

Upon arriving in London I was informed 
that it was impossible to cross the Channel, 
as all the boats had been requisitioned for 
the transport of troops. I was, therefore, 
obliged to wait until September I2th, when 
the first passenger boat left for Havre. 
After spending 14 hours on the train be- 
tween Havre and Paris, I arrived there at 



ACROSS IN THE STEERAGE 15 

seven in the morning, feeling somewhat 
used up, and went immediately to the 
Cooper-Hewitt Hospital, 21 Avenue de 
Bois de Boulogne. 

The battle of the Marne had just ended 
some thirty miles from Paris and the troops 
were fighting along the Aisne, a little further 
east. 



PART II 






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Self-styled journalist " is freed to go to Paris after having 
bicycled across the lines. 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 

September, IQ14: 

PARIS was deserted. Nearly all the 
stores were closed and the windows 
boarded up. When I turned into the Avenue 
de rOpera it was empty — one cart between 
the Opera and the Louvre, and not a soul 
on the sidewalks. 

Mrs. F., the Superintendent of the Hos- 
pital, had just returned from Montereau, 
an assembly point for wounded, and said 
that the conditions were something frightful. 
Hundreds of wounded men were lying on 
filthy straw, most of them not having had 
their wounds looked at for several days, 
almost all the wounds septic beyond de- 
scription, dysentery, gangrene and tetanus 
19 



20 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

prevalent throughout; no bandages, gauze, 
anaesthetics or capable surgeons and one 
nurse to about every fifty men. She said 
they had been looking at compound frac- 
tures with nothing but a candle. Tells me 
that the French officials in Paris do not 
seem to want wounded men brought in 
here, although there are some six hundred 
beds now prepared with first-class equip- 
ment and staff all ready and waiting for 
them; the reason being either that they 
are afraid the possibility of a siege is not 
over, or else that they are afraid the moral 
effect on the French public will be bad. 

The little hospital of fifty beds of which 
Mrs. F. is in charge, is beautifully equipped 
but as yet has no wounded. She says the 
only way to get them is to go out, collect 
them and bring them in yourself. A great 
many wounded have already been brought 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 21 

into Paris in this way. If you wait for 
official permission, the French red tape is 
so abominable that you can never get 
anywhere. 

She was on her way to the Majestic Hotel 
Hospital on the Ave. Kleber near the Arc 
de Triomphe, and I walked over with her to 
see it. They had twelve patients, their first 
lot, who had been brought in from Monte- 
reau the night before. Just as we arrived, 
a half dozen more came in an ambulance and 
I helped carry them in. As soon as this was 
done, I was detailed to hold a delirious Prus- 
sian officer who had a bad head wound. He 
was just coming out of the anaesthetic and 
had to have someone beside him to keep 
him still; they had recently removed some 
three ounces of rotten brains. The patient 
in the bed on the other side, who had just 
been brought in, and who was not yet 



22 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

undressed and washed, was wounded in 
the leg and, like the majority, was reeking 
with dysentery and septic pus. The Prus- 
sian officer was groaning terribly and roll- 
ing his eyes so that I could only see the 
whites of them. 

I am not accustomed to this sort of thing 
and in five minutes I was groggy and the 
first thing I knew, I had fainted. When I 
had got my head clear, I took a walk for a 
few minutes in the air, had a drink of brandy 
and then came back. A nurse showed me 
how to keep from fainting, by putting my 
head down between my knees and holding it 
there until the blood comes back; this I 
did at intervals throughout the day. 

Three of our men have wounds in the 
head and why any of them are still alive, 
is more than I can understand. One Ger- 
man soldier has been shot through the top 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 23 

and back of the head, the bullet coming out 
underneath the right eye, destroying its 
sight. All that side of his face is chocolate 
colored. I should not think he could live 
through the night. A Frenchman has a 
sabre cut across the top of his head, which 
has gone into the skull three inches. He is 
very restless but quite conscious. 

I left the hospital at seven o'clock in 
the evening to go home and get some 
sleep, as I had been up in the car all night, 
after having been told that if I came there 
the next morning, there would be plenty for 
me to do. The Metro was not running, so 
I walked from the Etoille to the Opera, 
where I lived. There was hardly a soul 
in the streets; hardly a light visible. The 
Place de la Concorde was as dark and still 
as a country churchyard, save for one huge 
search light on the top of the Hotel de 



24 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

Crillon, which swept the sky for German 
aeroplanes. A rather sharp contrast to 
the Paris of last year. 

Tuesday^ September 75; 

Arrived at the hospital where I met 
Mrs. F., who said she had been called to 
Limoges to report on conditions there. The 
Frenchman who had the sabre cut in his 
head had died about fifteen minutes before 
I came in. The hospital is in charge of 
Dr. G., an Englishman, with three operat- 
ing surgeons and an X-Ray specialist and 
a medical man; all the nurses are English 
or Canadian and about half of them speak 
French. A couple speak German. There 
has been no attempt at organization as yet. 
Nobody has had any particular job as- 
signed to him, no one knows what he or 
she is to do, and there is general confusion 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 25 

and disorder. The patients' dinner was 
very badly managed, with the head nurse 
running around looking after detail, instead 
of superintending the job. 

A French officer was brought in, in a 
private motor, by some friends about 
supper time. He had a flesh wound in his 
arm from a piece of shell, which he only 
got this noon. After the wound was dressed 
he took supper with us and was very 
interesting in talking about the day's 
fight. Said that the German cannon 
could be used at such range that the 
French could not return their fire. He had 
been wounded from a gun 11 kilometers 
away. 

I shall stay here as an orderly for the 
time being at least; help is needed badly 
and there is more work than we can at- 
tempt to do. 



26 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

Wednesday, September i6: 

Five more Frenchmen brought in. All of- 
ficers and all but one quite badly wounded. 
The German who was shot through the 
back of the head has recovered in the 
most wonderful way. When we brought 
him his lunch to-day he hoisted himself up, 
swung his legs over the bed and said he 
could eat it himself. He is incidentally 
shot through the shoulder, too, and his 
right arm broken. The delirious Prussian 
officer with whom I had my introduction 
to the job, looks pretty bad. He has been 
continuously out of his head and has not 
eaten anything for three days. 

Hospital still in confusion. This place 
must be run so everyone knows what he 
is supposed to do and when he is to do it. 
The work in the wards is exceptionally 
hard. Nearly all the patients have dysen- 




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MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 27 

tery and the wounds are all fearfully septic 
and require dressing two and three times 
a day. 

One Frenchman was shot through the 
chest and while he was on the ground a 
German bayonetted him in the stomach 
twice, someone else kicked him in the face 
and then he was walked over, and lay on 
the ground for two days before he was 
picked up. Both stomach wounds are dis- 
charging fecal matter freely. The French- 
man in the bed next to him has two broken 
legs and crawled around in a wood for five 
days before he was found. We have given 
him eleven litres of saline solution, but he 
is still nothing but skin and bones and his 
wounds are so septic that I do not see how 
he can live. This will give an idea of what 
the cases are like. 

To-night after supper, we got word that 



28 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

a train of British wounded would pass 
through Villeneuve St. Georges sometime 
in the early morning where they would 
stop for breakfast. W., one of the surgeons, 
a very capable French nurse, and I, de- 
cided that we get there some way and see 
if we could take off some of the more seri- 
ously wounded. If we can get some of 
these men to the hospital, we can probably 
save several limbs, if not lives, as all these 
wounds are septic and by the time the 
men had got to the base it is probable 
they would be too far gone for hope of 
recovery. The thing that is most needed, 
is to get the men off the field and to a 
place where they can have some sort of 
attention. 

We were told that it was absolutely im- 
possible to get out of Paris in an auto- 
mobile, and, therefore, went to the railway 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 29 

station where a train was leaving for Ville- 
neuve at midnight. It was then ten o'clock 
and the train was standing there with 
almost every seat taken. We decided that 
we would motor to the gates at any rate 
and see whether we could get through. We 
went to the gates where the little French 
nurse used her smile and supply of rapid 
French in such a way that in two minutes 
she had the guard hypnotized, and to our 
amazement we had been given permission 
to go through. Once through, away we 
went for Villeneuve, which was only eight 
miles outside. 

This ride was an exciting one. We were 
challenged by sentries, who halted us and 
pointed their bayonets at the radiator of 
the car. The chauffeur did not know the 
way; had no light; and was thoroughly 
scared. Each time we were challenged, he 



30 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

stopped the car so quickly that we nearly 
went through the wind shield; but by use 
of Madame's smile and the papers we had 
been given by the guard, we were passed 
immediately on each occasion. Arriving 
at Villeneuve, we went to a large warehouse 
full of German prisoners and less seriously 
wounded on all sides. Sentries were posted 
and camp fires burning. We were told 
that the train was not expected until about 
six in the morning. It was then only about 
half past eleven at night, so the three of 
us climbed into a day coach that was on 
a siding and went to sleep. 

The commanding medical officer here, 
a Captain McKinnon, was very decent 
and said he would let us go through the 
whole train when they stopped to get 
breakfast. We managed to get some sleep 
and at half past five the train was an- 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 31 

nounced. There Is no doubt about it — the 
English know how to run things. Every 
particular about the arrival of that train, 
what everyone should do, how the breakfast 
should be served, had been all thought out 
and everything went through without a 
hitch. Englishmen understand the value 
of discipline. 

The train consisted of about twenty box 
cars, in each one of which were some twenty- 
five or thirty men packed together upon 
the floor, lying on straw. About fifteen 
of the cars contained Scotchmen in their 
kilts. I had never seen such nerve as these 
fellows had. Not one of them would admit 
that there was anything the matter; they 
all insisted that they were all perfectly 
right and needed no attention at all and 
asked us to go on to the next cars "to see 
to the other lads." We got into each of 



32 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

the cars, examining the men and found a 
dozen that were very seriously wounded. 
One fellow, a piper from the famous Black 
Watch Regiment, had his right arm nearly 
severed at the shoulder; all the skin and 
muscle on the back of the shoulder blade 
was hanging loose. Upon operating on him 
later, we removed the entire secondary 
head of a shrapnel from under the skin 
beside his backbone. It was about the 
size and shape of the cork of an orange 
marmalade jar. "Fm not much hurt," 
he said in the car, "I can go to the Base 
all right, thank 'e." Poor fellow! He is 
dead now. Tetanus set in in twenty-four 
hours after we got him. Those stony, 
taciturn Scots certainly have real courage. 
"Nothing the matter with us!" Yes, noth- 
ing the matter until they are dead the 
next day. This man carried his pipes right 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 33 

into the hospital with a firm step and his 
head up. His name was Reed. 

I helped another wounded Scot from the 
Black Watch, from the car to the ware- 
house. "Ah, my lad," he said, "I've seen 
enough of war, and if ye'd seen the sights 
I saw Monday, ye'd be sick, too! A shell 
bursts be the side o' three o' your chums 
and after it's burst, there's not shell, nor 
man, nor nothing. All of them blown to 
rags! Don't tell me that the Germans 
can't shoot with their big guns, either! 
They can drop shells, one, two, three, four, 
just like that, right down our lines. There's 
not three hundred of the Black Watch left 
and Camerons is about the same." 

Little Madame is a genius for putting 
things through with French officials. She 
got hold of the station master and in about 
five minutes had hypnotized him into giv- 



34 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

ing us a car and having it put on the train 
which left for Paris at 8.30 A. M. We 
got all of our wounded, twenty-two in all, 
into it; and got to Paris at 10 A. M. Went 
to the hospital in a horrible old rattle-trap 
of an omnibus and another big cart, which 
caused all the men much unnecessary pain. 
There are a good many motors which could 
be put at the disposal of hospitals, but it 
is quite hard to get hold of them. Mrs. F. 
tells me that nearly all the people of means 
who should be doing things here have acted 
in the most cowardly and selfish way. 
They promise machines, houses and money 
and then take their machines out in the 
country with them, promising to return 
them the next day. Not a machine comes 
back. Most of the people who had been 
counted upon, have gradually petered out 
and run away. 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 35 

When we got to the hospital we cut the 
clothes off most of the men and I tied them 
up for storage. While I was doing this 
for one of the Scots, who had a bullet 
through his chest, another Black Watch 
man, by the way, he said, "Will ye let me 
have a look at those kilts?" I gave him 
the kilts and continued tying up his clothes. 
I thought he wanted to get something out 
of a pocket (although there are no pockets 
in kilts). When I looked up, he was folding 
them up with his one arm, as carefully as 
a woman tucking her baby in to sleep. 

"See that they're not mussed, will ye?" 
he said, as he handed them back to me. 

On this particular man, JoU, one of our 
surgeons, did a nice job. The bullet wound 
of entrance was under his left arm and 
there was no wound of exit. Joll passed 
his hand over his back and in a minute 



36 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

located the bullet on the other side of his 
body, quite close underneath the skin. I 
could feel or see absolutely nothing. This 
he cut out without removing the patient 
from his bed or giving him an anaesthetic. 

We are short of men this afternoon and 
there are a great many operations neces- 
sary. I am to help in the operating room 
all afternoon and probably most of the 
night. We started in at two in the after- 
noon. The first operation was amputating 
the French captain's leg below the knee. 
The foot was entirely black and there was 
no chance to save it. This operation was 
the first major operation I have ever seen 
and by some chance, proved to be a most un- 
usual one. When he had cut the leg off, tied 
up the arteries and loosened the tourniquet, 
the blood from one artery still kept pump- 
ing out. Upon investigation, it developed 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 37 

that a splinter of the bullet which passed 
through his leg had gone up and cut this 
artery about two inches above the place 
where he had amputated, and it was a 
question of taking the leg off above the 
knee, or getting up in some way and tying 
that artery. This JoU did after twenty 
minutes' work. Of course, I know nothing 
about surgery, but I do know that that 
man understands his business. It was one 
of the most interesting hours I ever spent 
in my life. I did not have the slightest 
feeling of faintness. The work in the 
ward has cured me of anything like 
that. 

No. I in Ward i is dead at last. The 
poor fellow had two mitrailleuse bullets 
through his head, and how he managed 
to keep alive for four days since we have 
had him, is incredible. He was so nice 



38 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

while he was still conscious and kept apolo- 
gizing to lis for the trouble he gave. 

The next two operations were on Scots 
from the Cameron Highlanders. Both of 
them had terrible elbows, although not so 
septic as usual. One man had lost all the 
flesh on one side and the other had his 
elbow-joint and forearm splintered and 
broken in several places. The bullet which 
struck this last man had broken into sev- 
eral pieces and had torn the arm all to bits. 
This fellow is about as perfect an animal 
as I have ever seen. He said he was the 
champion sprinter of his Regiment. Beauti- 
fully made and beautifully muscled. Poor 
fellow, he is a cripple for life now. 

To-night we brought in a Frenchman who 
had a severe gunshot wound in the back 
of his head. He was quite delirious. In 
some way the bullet has stimulated the 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 39 

part of his brain that he used when he 
was a child of about five. He seems to 
have forgotten everything else. He shouts, 
laughs and hurrahs and sings little nursery 
songs which he must have learned when 
he was a child. It is pathetic, but he is 
in such a splendid humor it is hard to keep 
from laughing yourself; he is a big hand- 
some fellow about 23 years old, evidently 
a man of good birth, although a private. 
We operated on him at one o'clock this 
morning, trephining the skull. Joll got 
about a teaspoonful of splintered bone out 
of his brain, which had been driven down 
from one to two inches, but said it was too 
dangerous to try to remove the bullet, 
although he located it with his telephone 
probe. How he can go digging around in 
the brain the way he does without killing 
the patients, seems marvellous. He says 



40 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

there is not much chance for this man 
recovering his senses, and that he will prob- 
ably be a permanent imbecile. 

Friday, September i8: 

The hospital is entirely full now, and 
we want a place to put about six con- 
valescents so that we can make room for 
others. Two surgeons and six nurses of 
our staff arrived this morning from Mon- 
tereau, from where they have come bring- 
ing a barge load of wounded up the Seine. 
All these men are badly wounded, but 
comparatively few have dysentery, which is 
a relief. We operated on them nearly all 
day. Most of them are English and Scotch 
and have wonderful nerve. The men are 
all pretty well played out and under weight. 
It takes hardly any chloroform to produce 
anaesthesia. Many of them shout about 





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MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 41 

the battle as they are going under. All 
of these men have been in action almost 
every day since the beginning of August. 
One old French captain kept shouting, 
"Allons, mes enfants, tous ensemble, en 
avant; en avant; en avan 1. A h!" 

One of the Scots told me that when the 
men deployed and lay down and they gave 
the order to commence firing, five minutes 
afterwards, you would only see about one 
man out of six firing, all the rest would be 
fast asleep. 

Three English officers were brought in 
to-night. Two of them are boys of twenty- 
two and twenty-three and have nothing at 
all the matter with them excepting that 
they are tired out. One was diagnosed as 
typhoid. One of them came in lying on a 
stretcher beside a Tommy. I got into the 
ambulance and started to take them out. 



42 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

The Tommy said, "Get the Orficer out 
first, sir." The "Orficer" took this as a 
matter of course and allowed himself to be 
removed. I supposed that he was badly 
wounded. There was nothing the matter 
with him at all except that he wanted a rest. 

The first thing he said was, "Cawn't I 
have a bawth?" 

I was furious! I said, "I think we will 
attend to the wounded men before we give 
you any *bawths."' 

He then said, "I say, don't I know you?" 

"No," I answered, "I'm quite sure you 
don't" and turned my back on him. The 
Tommy who had asked me to take his 
superior officer out of the ambulance first, 
had his leg amputated at the knee that 
afternoon, got tetanus and died four days 
afterward. 

I want to say right here that these two 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 43 

fellows are in a class by themselves as 
far as English officers are concerned. As a 
whole, they are the finest lot of men I have 
ever seen. 

An English boy upon whom we operated 
to-night, was hit on the right side of the 
jaw. The entire side of his jaw is gone. 
You could put an orange into his mouth 
through the cheek. What is left is horribly 
swollen and dripping yellow septic pus. I 
said, "That fellow really cannot live, can 
he?" But Joll said, "Oh, yes, there is no 
reason why he should die, if we can keep 
him from getting poisoned." The bottom 
part of his tongue is gone, so that he can- 
not speak articulately and if he holds his 
head back, his tongue falls backward in 
his mouth and chokes him. He has to lie 
face downward and of course cannot take 
anything but liquid food. When he feels 



44 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

like eating anything, he raps on the table 
with his feeder and we go to his bed, put a 
basin in front of him and a rubber cloth 
around his neck; then he pushes a rubber 
tube down his throat and we pour in beef 
tea, or milk, through a funnel. About 
every other swallow, it goes down the wrong 
way and he strangles for two minutes; then 
nods his head as if to say "all ready again." 
In the course of three-quarters of an hour 
feeding in this way, which must be exceed- 
ingly painful, he can get down about one 
feeder full of beef tea or milk, half of an 
ordinary glassful. 

I said, "My gracious! you've got more 
nerve than anyone I've ever seen." 

He made a quick motion with his hand, 
like an umpire waving away players at a 
baseball game, frowned at me and gurgled, 
"I'm all right." 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 45 

On for the night to-night, although I 
have been on all day and got to bed last 
night at one o'clock, after having been up 
for two days and a night in succession. 
Took a walk with G. first. By the way, 
G. and N. are both professional singers. 
They have never done this sort of work 
before and are perfect trumps. The scenes 
that we experience in the wards daily are 
not exactly designed for artistic tempera- 
ments. N. nearly cries at some of the 
things he has to do, but he sticks right to 
it and finishes them out like a good one. 

My first night in Ward 2 was pretty 
bad. Nearly all of the men had been 
operated on either that day or the day be- 
fore, and their wounds were commencing 
to pain them fearfully. The Scotch piper 
who had the piece of shrapnel taken out of 
his back was in terrible agony. He is get- 



46 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

ting a stiff neck and spells of breathlessness, 
which means lockjaw, and the poor fellow 
will be out of his pain before very long. 
I tried to comfort him and told him what 
we had got out of his back. 

"Thank God for that," he said, "it 
makes me feel easier," but the convulsions 
became more frequent and terrible and he 
died in agony at seven in the morning. 

We moved the officers into another ward, 
which was quite an undertaking, as most of 
them were badly wounded and two weighed 
over 200 pounds. 

More wounded coming in and operations 
as fast as we can do them. There has been 
terrific fighting along the Marne and the 
Aisne, all of this week. Williams is splen- 
did with his X-Rays. Nearly all the pa- 
tients are photographed before operating 
upon them. Williams has located a great 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 47 

many bullets, pieces of shell, overcoat, etc., 
and makes first rate pictures of fractures. 
These, he develops in about three minutes 
and brings into the operating room so that 
J. and S. can see them before the patient 
is thoroughly" under anaesthesia. 

G. left for London this morning and 
before leaving drew up a very rough or- 
ganization chart, which assigns me as an 
attache of the operating room. This is 
splendid. I have been practically doing 
the work of surgeon's assistant there for 
the past 48 hours. 

Saturday^ September ig: 

Went to bed at ten in the morning and 
slept for three hours. Came back to the 
hospital at two in the afternoon, where 
we operated continuously until two in the 
morning. Four head cases, four fractured 



48 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

femurs, three arms and a number of minor 
operations. 

Sunday, September 20: 

Slept until noon. Had some lunch at 
two and went out and walked in the Bois 
for an hour. It was the first fresh air 
I have had for some time. Had supper 
with F., who wanted to talk over the pros- 
pect of going to some of the field hospitals, 
which it is proposed to establish close to 
the line of battle. It has been my wish to 
do this sort of work, and I feel I could be 
of far more use out there, than in a hos- 
pital. If the men could only receive some 
sort of attention on the field, it would be a 
very different story when they are finally 
got to the hospital. Out of twenty-five 
patients in Ward I, fully half of them 
lay on the battlefield for three days with- 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 49 

out food or water, before they were picked 
up. Some of them four and five days. 

Monday^ September 21: 

When I arrived at the hospital this 
morning I was informed that they had de- 
cided to put G. and myself on night duty 
for the coming week. This is something 
of a disappointment, but I shall be back 
again in the operating room at the end of 
that time. 

There were four deaths on Sunday. The 
Prussian with whom I had my introduction 
to the job; the man with the awful leg in 
Ward I, and two others whom we had 
just taken in and who were about dead 
when they arrived. One of them died a 
few hours after having his leg amputated 
at the hip. There really was not much 
use in doing it; the leg was so rotten that 



so THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

you could nearly have pulled it off with 
your hands; besides that, the poor fellow 
had fearful dysentery and had become so 
reduced that he looked like pictures of 
people In India who have died from famine. 
After lunch, went down town with 
Mrs. F. In her car, where we inspected 
the Ritz Hotel, which has been turned 
into a hospital. There are sixty-four beds 
there, splendid equipment; about twenty-five 
nurses, everything that could be wished, 
and no patients. The reason is, that the 
French doctors in charge will not move 
without authority from the officials of the 
Bureau de Sante. We told them that they 
would never get any patients if they waited 
for authority from them. Mrs. F. has been 
making a list of available beds now waiting 
for patients in Paris, and says she is sure 
there are over nine hundred, yet the French 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 51 

red tape and petty officialism is so abomi- 
nable that nothing is done, and wounded 
men are lying at the gates of Paris amid 
conditions that can hardly be described. 
At Limoges — in the center of France — two 
weeks ago, there were over nine thousand 
wounded, and accommodations for about 
half that number; there was absolutely no 
provision for their care at all, and they 
are dying like flies in the autumn.* The 
French management of wounded trains is so 
shocking that it can hardly be spoken of. 
Men are crowded into box cars where they lie 
about on the floor, dead and living together, 
for three or four days, in filth that is beyond 
description. All the men have dysentery, 

* It must be remembered that this was at the very 
beginning of the war. They had no time in which to 
organize themselves or make any preparation for 
handling the wounded. All their efforts had been di- 
rected toward saving Paris. 



52 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

all the wounds are septic and, of course, 
they cannot remove any part of their 
clothes which have been on their bodies 
for weeks. We have spoken to the Bureau 
de Sante but they say, "We must consider 
this one of the horrors of war." JoU said 
that in one place the wounded were in 
such numbers that the French surgeons 
merely amputated above the wound in 
every case where careful dressing would be 
required. 

W., who went out to Villeneuve with 
us, came in from another expedition for 
wounded to-night; they had been out along 
the Marne River in our ambulance with 
its white body and Red Cross painted on 
the sides. As they were passing a wood 
about one hundred meters from the road, 
twenty or thirty Germans sprang out of 
it and opened fire upon them with their 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 53 

carbines. This is the first time I have 
really had first hand information of Ger- 
mans firing upon Red Cross ambulances. 
They put six holes through the cover of 
the car, but fortunately did not hit any- 
body in it. There are considerable numbers 
of Germans who have become lost during 
this rapidly moving line of fighting and 
are prowling about the country, hiding 
during the daytime and ready to take any 
means of rejoining their companions. 

It is not an uncommon occurrence in 
the suburbs of Paris these days, to find a 
stranded German soldier in the early morn- 
ing, trying to rob your chicken roost. 

German atrocities have been, of course, 
much overdrawn, but there is no doubt that 
many of the stories are true. A Belgian 
who had been in the Home Guard of 
Brussels and who had fought at Louvain, 



54 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

told me that he had seen Germans kill 
wounded men on the ground by smashing 
them on the head with the butts of their 
carbines. I said: "Did you actually see 
them with your own eyes?" "Oui, Mon- 
sieur, pas une fois, mais douze foisl" he 
replied. Other French soldiers have told 
me, however, that while they lay wounded 
on the ground, the Germans stopped and 
gave them water to drink out of their own 
canteens. As Mr. Burke says, "You cannot 
draw an indictment against a whole nation." 

Tuesday, September 22: 

A busy night to-night. There were three 
head operations. We got the bullets out 
of two. 

We brought in a new wounded man 
to-day, who has two fingers of his right 
hand gone and a very septic wound. He is 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 55 

a fine looking fellow, a private in the Cold- 
stream Guards, and the first man I have 
seen yet, either officer or private, who has 
talked coherently about the tactics of the 
fighting. He knew what his regiment and 
the other regiments with his, were trying 
to do in most of the actions they were en- 
gaged in, naming nearly all of them. 

He was very interesting and had been 
in action almost every day for four weeks. 
Said they had only been landed in Ostend 
for fifteen minutes, when they had their 
first skirmish with a German patrol which 
ran into them without knowing they were 
there. Said that at Mons the slaughter 
of the Germans had been terrific; that he 
had seen men shooting from behind piles 
of dead Germans three feet high. Said 
that a good deal of the work had been 
hand-to-hand mix-ups. Said that about 



56 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

August 1 2th they had nearly the entire 
right wing of the German army surrounded, 
and that if the Germans had not broken 
through the Belgian left, they would have 
captured or killed all of them. As it was, 
the Germans lost about twenty-five thou- 
sand. They then asked for an armistice 
for twenty-four hours to bury their dead, 
but this armistice was not granted, as the 
real purpose of asking was to give them 
time to reorganize themselves. Said that 
the Germans fired on Red Cross organiza- 
tions consistently, that the first time they 
had sent out a detachment of the R. A. 
M. C. in the daytime near Mons, the 
Germans almost annihilated them. Out of 
two hundred and fifty that went out, 
only about ninety returned. Since then all 
this work has been done at night. 

One of the first wounded we got in 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 57 

from the Marne, is a little aesthetic looking 
Frenchman, whom we call "Peeping Tom" 
because he is always peeping like a little 
chicken. I don't blame him, for he has a 
nasty septic wound on the thigh and frac- 
tured femur, but he is a nuisance and is 
always asking for this, that or the other 
thing, whether he needs it or not. The 
Sisters had him in a private room at Mon- 
tereau and he was well spoiled by them. 
He is only about twenty-two. A couple 
of days ago he was making an unusual 
amount of racket about the "jambe," 
and I went over and asked him what was 
the matter. 

"Oh, ca fait mal; ce n'est pas bien place," 
he moaned. 

I raised the knee slightly as he directed 
me to, and when he said that it was easier, 
I put a china soap cup which was lying 



58 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

on the table beside the bed, underneath 
it to keep it in that position. 

"Oh, la, la; Oh, Docteurl" he shouted. 

"What's the matter? Is it hurting you 
worse?" said I. 

"No," he replied. 

"Well, what's the matter then?" I asked. 

He clasped his hands in front of him, 
holding them out toward me with a look 
of supplication. 

"Oh, mais c'est si froid!" he wailed. 

"You shut up!" said I, laughing, and he 
had to even smile himself. 

Got to bed at ten in the morning and 
slept until one. Back again at two in the 
afternoon for another week of day duty. 

Thursday, September 24: 

We need some system here badly. The 
nurses may be very good technical nurses, 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 59 

but not one of them knows the first thing 
about organization or management. After 
half a dozen lunches where everything was 
in confusion — three people doing one job 
and no people doing two jobs, — I thought 
it was about time to outline the work a bit 
myself. So I drew up an organization chart 
assigning everybody definite duties. The 
head nurse said she hadn't any objections 
to my trying it, so we put it into operation. 
The meals, at least, will run smoothly now, 
although the difficulty about running a 
place like this is that it is not on a hiring 
and firing basis, like other business or- 
ganizations. If you have inefficient help 
you have to keep them, and do the best 
you can. 

A boy was brought in here this morning 
with a hand and arm like nothing I have 
ever seen before. He already shows the 



6o THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

first symptoms of tetanus. We have kept 
the arm in a bath and given him the 
maximum amount of tetanus serum. His 
hand is a slimy green thing, the size of a 
mop, with the poor fingers like rotten 
cucumbers. It cannot be described on 
paper, one has to see it to get an idea of 
what it is like. 

Another man who has been shot in the 
leg has something the matter with his 
stomach, too, and has been vomiting steadily 
since nine o'clock this morning. They have 
given him medicine, but it does not stop, 
and he is so reduced and exhausted that 
he does not look as if he could live long. 

We have another bad case. A young 
English sergeant with a piece of his spine 
shot away. He has been married only six 
months and his wife is in Paris and at 
the hospital now. It is very pathetic. He 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 6i 

cannot live, and to hear them talking about 
what they will do when he gets better, al- 
most makes one cry. There is no use tell- 
ing her that he is going to die. 

To-night JoU gave instructions to have 
four patients in Ward No. 2 sent into the 
theater, in a certain order and at a certain 
time. The day shift went off duty and the 
night shift came on duty without being 
given these instructions. As a result, when 
he was ready to commence work, no one 
in the ward knew anything. JoU was 
furious; sent upstairs and got the head 
nurse out of bed and had her come down 
and point out the patients. He is quite 
right; she must be made to understand 
that it is necessary to systematize her 
work. 

Very interesting operations again to-night 
and I stayed at the hospital until i A. M. 



6z THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

One operation was the injection of Stovane 
serum into the spinal column. It renders 
the part of the body below the point of injec- 
tion insensible to pain for twenty-four hours 
or so. Within ten minutes after giving this 
injection, Joll cut into the patient's leg, 
hooked out the sciatic nerve and injected 
anti-tetanic serum into it. The patient 
was sitting up and talking all the time with- 
out any feeling of pain at all. This was 
wonderful work. The sciatic nerve is 
almost in the middle of the thigh and Joll 
got down to it in about one minute with- 
out cutting a muscle or losing more than 
a few teaspoonfuls of blood. 

Friday y September 25: 

Saw Mr. Bacon, the former Ambassador 
to France, this morning and had an hour's 
talk with him. He says there isn't any 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 63 

chance of getting to the front. The Eng- 
lish and French armies won't have any 
outsiders messing about their work. I 
think they are quite right, but it Is a dis- 
appointment. Mr. Bacon has been to the 
general staff, so there is not much use in 
trying anything after that. 

Dinner and supper went off in first rate 
shape to-day, and we cleaned up the ward 
and pantry and got everything that wasn't 
working, out of the way. 

The man who was vomiting all day yester- 
day, died this morning shortly after I came 
in. It was rather a sudden death. He had 
seemed easier and was talking to a nurse 
beside his bed — asked her to get him some- 
thing; she went away and when she came 
back again — within one minute — he was 
dead. We don't yet know what he died of, 
except that he was generally all in. 



64 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

The young sergeant who had had the 
section of his spine shot away, is also dead, 
and his poor little wife is in a pitiful state. 
N. took her out riding in an automobile. 
He can talk to people like a father; and she 
needs a change of scene and fresh air or 
else she will break down, too. 

Saturday^ September 26: 

M., the little French nurse who went to 
Villeneuve with us to get the wounded, is 
suspected of being a German spy! I do 
not know what to think. I cannot size her 
up exactly. She is certainly very smart, 
and doesn't look like a French woman. 
Mme. P. who sent her to us from the 
Union des Femmes de France, told us she 
didn't know much about her, and sug- 
gested that we watch her. N. is a good 
authority on languages, speaking French, 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 65 

English and German perfectly enough to 
pass for any one of the three. He says he 
knows she is not French by the way she 
pronounces certain French words, and that 
he is almost certain she is German on ac- 
count of other distinctive pronunciations. 
I do not know what to think. 

I told little M. that there was a report 
going about to the effect that she was a 
German spy. She had been told this be- 
fore, and I wanted to see what she would 
say. She seemed quite angry, and said that 
people could be put in prison for making 
assertions of that kind without cause. 
I told her that it was all nonsense, of course, 
and that none of us thought there was 
anything in it and that we all knew she 
was French. She said she could prove it 
easily enough. (Later on she did.) 

Our relations with the management of 



66 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

this hotel are decidedly unpleasant. I 
am quite sure that the only reason the 
hotel was given as a hospital was as a 
sort of insurance proposition. When the 
Germans were at the gates of Paris and 
their entrance to the city imminent, a 
hotel containing wounded soldiers, espe- 
cially wounded Germans, would be less 
liable to be looted and damaged. Now 
that there is no chance of the Germans 
getting in here, I think they would jolly 
well like to kick us all out. The French 
manager is an impossible little fellow, and 
has been given instructions by someone 
else to cut down expenses to the last cent. 
He runs about having electric lights turned 
off, and hiding cups, plates, knives, forks, 
etc., and making it generally uncomfortable 
for us. I had to go out this morning and 
buy three dozen drinking glasses for the 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS e^^ 

patients in our ward; it saved time to get 
them that way rather than fight with these 
people. 

The little Scotch boy with the awful 
hand is beginning to have convulsions. It 
is terrible to watch him, but he is kept so 
full of morphine that he does not feel 
much. He has such a nice gentle face. 

Sunday, September 27; 

Four bombs were dropped on Paris at 
noon to-day; one of them landed in the 
Avenue du Trocadero, about 300 yards 
from the hospital, and blew a little girl's 
leg off. It also came quite close to Mr. 
Herrick, the American Ambassador. Not 
much other damage done, however. 

The boy with the awful hand is somewhat 
better. JoU says he is likely to live, as 
the convulsions extend only above the 



68 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

waist. He hasn't yet had any that extend 
over his entire body, where the head and 
heels are bent backwards like a bow un- 
til they almost meet. I do not know why 
a hand and arm like that are left on him, 
but the nurses tell me that when a patient 
has tetanus, they don't operate. 

Helped to dress the captain's leg to-day 
with Dr. S. and Tom. ... It is wonder- 
fully improved. A terrible septic shell 
wound in the thigh and fractured femur. 
The first time I saw that leg I thought: 
What is the use of keeping it on? The man 
had been in a German hospital for two 
weeks, where the leg had received prac- 
tically no attention, although he said they 
did what they could for him. "When I first 
picked it up, the skin parted at the heel 
like wet tissue paper, and yellow slime ran 
out, while the wound on the thi^h looked 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 69 

and smelt like rotten fish. Now the flesh 
is good and red, and although there are 
enormous incisions on each side which go 
clean through, he will probably be able to 
walk on it before this time next year. We 
take almost a basinful of stufling out of 
it every time it is dressed. It reminds me 
of a conjurer pulling guinea pigs and things 
out of a hat. There seems to be no end 
to them. 

Monday^ September 28: 

Had breakfast at the Hotel de TEmpire 
this morning, as the hospital one is ir- 
regular and bad, — one waiter for fourteen 
men, and twenty-five nurses. The other 
morning we came in and found only six 
cups on the table. Upon asking why there 
were no more, we were informed that the 
management had not left out any more. 



70 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

It appears that they had set aside one cup 
each for the patients, and one each for the 
staff, etc., and that some of the cups were 
mislaid. Williams ran and got the manager 
and told him he would punch his head, if 
he didn't get us other cups in five min- 
utes. 

We have a new head nurse in Ward 2 
now. Miss W. She is fine, the first 
woman we have had here yet who knows 
how to give orders. Miss A. is a nice 
girl, and, I suppose, a fairly good nurse, 
but she knows no more about management 
than a babe in arms. This new nurse will 
soon have everything in shipshape. She 
accomplished more this morning than the 
rest of them have done in a week. 

The boy with the awful hand died this 
morning. It was a shame to have him go; 
he made a splendid fight for life and we all 



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MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 71 

thought he was going to get well. There is 
not much hope for tetanus, though. I believe 
the mortality is over ninety per cent. I have 
bought a pair of gloves and a linen coat. 
I am afraid to handle patients like that with 
my bare hands and have them touch my 
clothes. If you should have anything open 
on your hand and get any of that stuff into 
it, it is an even chance that you will get 
tetanus yourself, and I handle dirty cases 
hourly. 

Had a little conversation with my friend 
Jock Constable, the Black Watch Scot, who 
has been in the ward for some ten days. 
He said that when he first got hit (they 
were charging the Germans with the bayo- 
net), it turned him end over end, and he 
was unconscious for about an hour. He 
said when he came to, he was lying in a 
little depression on the ground with some 



72 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

other wounded men. Beside him was a 
German whose head was blown off. At 
about dusk the Germans came up. 

*'I saw them a comin', so I closed my 
eyes," he said, "but I could na help from 
smiling hearin' 'en say ^Yah, yah, yah' to 
each other." 

The Germans went over them and took 
their bully beef and hard tack, which they 
immediately devoured. They left soon 
afterwards, and it began to rain and con- 
tinued raining all night. 

In the morning he heard some soldiers 
coming up, and when he saw they were 
English, he said, "Is the coast clear.?" 
They answered, "You're all right, Jock, 
they're all ahead of us now." So he got 
up and got to the rear himself and 
sent the stretcher bearers up for the 
others. 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 73 

Tuesday, September 2g: 

Our ambulance brought in seven new 
cases from Noisy-le-Sec, all of which are 
pretty bad. One man has a bullet through 
the left side of his face which has taken 
out nearly all of the upper row of canine 
and molar teeth. The face is badly swollen 
and there is no wound of exit. He is 
conscious, though, and Joll says he will 
probably get well even if we do not remove 
the bullet. Face wounds look terrible but 
they are generally much less serious than 
they seem. I would a great deal rather 
have a face wound like that than a frac- 
tured femur. Another boy — one of the 
little chasseurs Alpines — has a bullet wound 
passing sideways through his wind-pipe. 
He was just able to breathe. Joll did the 
tracheotomy operation on him with local 
anaesthetics in about ten minutes, and had 



74 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

him back in the ward breathing through a 
silver tube stuck in his neck above the 
collar bone. They say he will be all right 
in two weeks. Another man has a shrapnel 
bullet which came down on him from above, 
cutting through his neck about four inches, 
but not breaking the jaw. It then passed 
into the shoulder at the point of the scapula, 
breaking the bone and lodging under the 
skin at the neck of the humerus. Took 
out the bullet and sewed up the wound. 
The face wound is merely superficial. 

The next man had the largest assortment 
of wounds that I have seen yet. All of 
them were over ten days old and you could 
smell him from across the room. He had 
a cut on the top of his head four or five 
inches long, with the skin hanging loose. 
His right shoulder and the upper part of 
his arm were the color of morocco leather 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 75 

with blood infusion under the skin, and 
the shoulder badly broken. He had been 
thrown violently against something. The 
right arm had been almost completely 
severed at the wrist, all tendons were cut 
and the hand chocolate colored and smell- 
ing like rotten meat, which it was. Three 
fingers were gone from the other hand and 
a piece of flesh missing from the calf of 
his right leg as big as a mutton chop. We 
went over him in the theater; the scalp 
wound proved to be superficial and the 
skull not damaged. The septic arm had 
to be amputated below the elbow, as there 
was no possibility of conservative treat- 
ment. The rest of his wounds were cleaned 
and dressed. The man was French, a fine 
looking and well-educated fellow, although 
a private. He got out of bed and on to 
the stretcher himself and talked to us cheer- 



76 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

fully, although he must have been in ter- 
rible pain. I asked him if he had not 
knocked over a cavalry charge, but he 
said, "Non, un obus seulement." 

Several fractured femurs are being treated 
in a rather peculiar way. A tenpenny nail is 
driven into the bone and the leg hung from the 
nail. J. says it is the latest and best way of 
supporting a fractured limb. It does not 
seem to hurt the patients, but it looks very 
queer to see the head of an ordinary nail stick- 
ing out of the flesh with a string tied to it. 

Dressed the Captain's leg again. He has 
to be put under chloroform each time. The 
leg is wonderfully better and hardly smells 
at all now. 

Wednesday, September jo: 

The new head nurse — Miss W. — is fine. 
She has the place running like a machine 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS -j^ 

now, and there isn't so much to do. After 
lunch this afternoon, I took Jock S., one of 
the Scots, out in an open carriage in his 
kilts, for a drive through Paris. He only- 
had a fracture of the humerus and is now 
convalescent. He has been brought up in 
a little country town in Scotland all his 
life and had never been in a big city. I 
took him past the Arc de Triomphe; down 
the Champs Elysees; past the Louvre and 
to Notre Dame and told him about Revolu- 
tionary French history. We had tea and 
a couple of large sized portions of his na- 
tive Scotch whiskey. He had a good time, 
I think. He kept repeating — "Ah, ye 
don't know what this means to a bloke 
like me. Ah, but I wish the missus was 
along. It's the best afternoon I ever spent 
in my life." 

I had to run into Brentano's for a mo- 



78 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

ment and left Jock in the open barouche 
outside, on the Avenue de FOpera. When 
I came out I found him surrounded by a 
crowd of at least fifty people, who were 
all asking him questions in both French 
and English. Jock looked terribly unhappy. 
When I got into the carriage and we 
started off, he put his hand on my knee 
and said, with a look of unspeakable relief, 
"Lord, I was just a prayin' for ye to come." 
We have a large flock of visitors now 
daily. Every afternoon between four and 
five o'clock a lot of philanthropic old ladies, 
together with relatives of the wounded, 
arrive, bringing cigarettes, chocolate, books, 
etc. Last week one old lady appeared and 
suddenly from under her cloak produced a 
squirt gun, about two feet long, loaded with 
cologne, and started around the ward with 
it. One of the first men she got to was 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 79 

Jock Constable, of the Black Watch. She 
marched up to him, held the nozzle a few 
inches from his nose and soused him with 
perfume. Jock had never been up against 
this sort of thing before and didn't quite 
know what to do. You could see he didn't 
know whether to duck or not. He, never- 
theless, submitted with good grace and 
escaped uninjured. 

Thursday, October i: 

Mr. Bacon stopped at the hotel this 
morning and asked me if I would come 
with him to the American Ambulance. He 
has been using his own car as an ambulance 
and has brought in a number of special 
cases direct from the field. We went to 
Neuilly in his automobile and he told me 
that I could get work there which would 
offer me more opportunities than the Ma- 



8o THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

jestic Hotel Hospital. I said that anything 
which would get me near the front could 
have me. The American Ambulance is 
located in a huge new public school build- 
ing. They have three hundred and fifty 
patients there now, with immediate capacity 
for five hundred, and an ultimate capacity 
for one thousand. 

I forgot to say that about ten days ago 
we called them up and asked if they could 
get us some patients with their automobiles. 
They told us they could get us twenty 
wounded which they were bringing in from 
Villeneuve that night. I do not know the 
details of the case, but there was some 
inexcusable mix-up on our part. They 
arrived with the twenty and we were ready 
to take only five. This was at three o'clock 
in the morning and it was raining. They 
had to take the rest of their patients away 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 8i 

to put them anywhere they could. I was 
on duty that night and remember it well. 
Their head ambulance man was very angry 
and rightly so. I met him at the American 
Ambulance this morning, and spoke of that 
night. 

He said: "I am done with the Majestic. 
When I got there that night, you know, 
the first thing I did was to spend fifteen 
minutes trying to find somebody who knew 
anything at all. Finally I got hold of 
some man who said 'he thought they were 
to take some wounded, but that the only 
man who knew was the chief surgeon.' I 
was then shown in my street clothes into 
the operating room, where the chief surgeon 
was at work on a patient who was lying on 
the table with his brain exposed. As I was 
getting ready to leave, some dub came out 
who said that we had given them four pa- 



82 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

tients and not five and wanted me to come 
into the ward and count them. I think he 
was drunk." (That was N. and he wasn't 
drunk.) 

Nevertheless, he is more or less right in 
what he says. That mix-up was inexcus- 
able and was entirely due to G. not having 
organized the hospital. J. and W. are not 
supposed to be organizers. They were 
brought there to operate and have been 
busy doing it all the time. 

Well, the place is all right now, and 
there will never be anything like that 
again. 

Mr. Bacon introduced me to Dr. De 
Bouchet, the head of the Ambulance, and 
Dr. Gross, the chief medical man. They 
told me that they would put me in the 
Ambulance Corps if I wanted to come. 
They are about to take on five more Ford 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 83 

Ambulances, to operate from various bases, 
twenty miles or so from Paris. This is 
more like the work I have been wishing to 
do. Another proposition, which seems even 
better, Mr. Bacon spoke of to-day: It 
seems that there is being organized at this 
moment, an ambulance service to operate 
in direct conjunction with the British and 
French armies in the field. This is being 
run by Mr. Harjes, of Morgan, Harjes & 
Co. Of course, it is exactly what I want 
and Mr. Bacon will get me into it, if he 
can. 

Back to the hospital in time to serve 
the patients' lunch. 

Went out for a walk at five and upon 
returning, find a note from Mrs. Harjes 
asking me to call upon her to-night to talk 
over going to the front with their Am- 
bulance Service and Field Hospital. "Am- 



84 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

bulance Mobile de Premiers Secours," as 
it is called. 

Friday^ October 2: 

I called upon Mrs. Harjes this morning, 
who tells me that they have definite au- 
thority to work as they had planned. They 
already have a half dozen automobiles, 
nearly all their equipment, two operating 
surgeons in Paris, and Mr. J. P. Morgan 
of New York has cabled them that he has 
sent over four more. They are now on the 
ocean. 

Dr. W., an American, is their chief 
surgeon, and I had a half hour's talk with 
him. He says that the thing is absolutely 
settled and that we are going to start just 
as quickly as we can get all our equipment 
together. We shall probably leave Sunday 
afternoon. 



MAJESTIC HOTEL HOSPITAL, PARIS 85 

The idea is to follow up the lines of 
battle, get the wounded men off the field 
and bring them to a point as close to the 
rear as we deem safe, where we will give 
them first aid and send them on. He has 
accepted my offer to help in this work and 
this diary will stop here for the time being. 

Note: The subsequent writing was not commenced 
until three weeks later. 



PART III 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS AT 
RICQUEBOURG 

October g: 

WE left Paris at six o'clock in the 
morning in two automobiles, the 
party consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Harjes, the 
chief surgeon, the head nurse, R. and his 
chauffeur, and a French caporal who is to 
represent the army and keep military rec- 
ords, etc. We all have uniforms something 
like the English, and good warm overcoats. 

We had all the necessary papers and 
authority, and the purpose of the trip was 
to find a suitable place to locate for the 
time being. 

We first went to Compiegne. It was a 

clear, crisp morning. The little town was 

89 



90 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

jammed with British and French troops. 
Automobiles were tearing about the streets. 
Everything and everybody was at high 
tension and the atmosphere was charged 
with excitement. Twenty minutes by mo- 
tor, would take us into the German lines. 
An aeroplane was heading directly at us. 
"Is it a taube?" everyone was asking. 
"No, it is English," was presently an- 
nounced, and we found ourselves cheering 
the aviator with the crowd. 

We were informed that the local am- 
bulance was of sufficient capacity and no 
help was needed. We went to Pierrefonds 
and a couple of other places, with the same 
result. The next stop was at a place called 
Ricquebourg, which was close to the firing. 
There was a concealed French battery on 
the hill, not more than three hundred yards 
from the automobile, which suddenly fired 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 91 

a dozen shells at the Germans. We waited 
in terror for their reply, but nothing came. 

There was an ambulance located in a 
chateau nearby, but it seemed too close to 
the line of battle for comfort or wisdom, 
so we turned back and went to a couple of 
other small towns. At one of these places 
was a General B., the medical head of the 
Red Cross Division, whose territory we 
were in. We asked him if he could put us 
anywhere, and he said that Ricquebourg, 
the place we had just left, would be a good 
base; that, although close to the front, 
the French positions were very strong, and 
we would have plenty of time to evacuate 
should the Germans advance. 

We, therefore, turned around and went 
back to Ricquebourg accompanied by the 
old general in his automobile. The French 
ambulance in the chateau had practically 



92 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

nothing to work with. They had neither 
cotton nor gauze, and were using strips of 
the chateau's sheets for bandages. All of 
their equipment was promptly packed into 
two dress suit cases and they were moved out; 
we taking their place. The head nurse and 
I were left on the premises to get things 
ready. 

The waste of war was forcibly illustrated 
on our way from Paris to Compiegne. All 
along the road were evidences of the great 
battle of the Marne, which had just taken 
place. Automobile trucks smashed to pieces, 
automobile trucks burnt, supply wagons 
broken down, dead horses, parts of equip- 
ment, trees cut down and shot down, vil- 
lages burnt; devastation everywhere. 

The Germans had no time to save any- 
thing that went wrong. If one of their 
automobiles got out of order, they simply 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 93 

took It to the side of the road and touched 
a match to It, so the French would not get 
it. Senlls was almost leveled to the ground, 
many blocks of houses had been syste- 
matically destroyed, blown up and burnt. 
The story is that the Mayor of Senlis when 
asked to pay an enormous ransom to the 
Germans, refused to do so, at which the 
Germans took him out, forcibly made him 
dig his own grave, and then stood him in 
it, and shot him in the presence of his wife 
and children. Senlis is about twenty-two 
'miles from Paris. 

Our chateau at Ricquebourg is a most 
beautiful place. It belongs to the Vicomte 
de Labry, who is now in the Army. His 
wife ran away when the Germans came 
through the first time, and the chateau 
was then requisitioned by the Government 
as a hospital. 



94 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

It was originally built on piles in the 
manner of the chateau at Chantilly, and 
is still surrounded by the moat which has 
been turned into a beautiful pond, with 
swans and old fat carp. The place is thor- 
oughly fitted out with modern improve- 
ments, and the grounds are very extensive 
and well kept. 

We sat down to supper, with the officers, 
in the beautiful old dining-room amid the 
roar of cannon, the brilliant French uni- 
forms, the old silver and candles and ma- 
hogany. I felt as if I were living in a 
Meissonier picture. 

The excitement and kaleidoscopic change 
of scene that we had been through during 
the day, made it impossible for me to sleep; 
so at 2 A. M., I gave it up and went 
down stairs and talked to the two sen- 
tries. 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 95 

October 10: 

The head nurse and I spent the morning 
fixing up the place for a hospital. We had 
six French soldiers to help us, and the three 
men servants of the house. We moved 
everything out of the four large rooms on 
the first floor, which we wanted for wards, 
and stored the furniture on the third floor. 
The curtains were taken down, the walls 
draped with sheets, etc. We had a busy 
day of it, and our French soldiers were a 
stupid, lazy lot. 

At four o'clock in the afternoon, three of 
our ambulances came up bringing two other 
nurses, and a great deal of material. This 
was unloaded and stored away; the am- 
bulances returning to Paris with the chauf- 
feurs, leaving the two nurses. 

By six o'clock we had finished, and one 
of the French officers asked us if we would 



96 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

like to see some of the German shells burst- 
ing. We all said we should, and went out 
along the road with him for about a mile 
and a half, where cutting into the fields, 
we ascended a long sloping hill with a small 
patch of woods on the top. 

The officer said we should be able to 
see the position of the French batteries 
half a mile away, where the German 
shells were bursting, as soon as we had 
reached the crest of the hill. We had 
just crossed the summit when suddenly he 
exclaimed: "Listen, here comes one now!" 
We held our breath and waited to see our 
first German shell. There was a sound 
like the roar of an express train, coming 
nearer at tremendous speed, with a loud 
singing, wailing noise. It kept coming and 
coming and I wondered when it would 
ever burst. Then when it seemed right on 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 97 

top of us, it did, with a shattering crash 
that made the earth tremble. It was ter- 
rible. The concussion felt like a blow in 
the face, the stomach and all over; it was 
like being struck unexpectedly by a huge 
wave in the ocean. It exploded about 
two hundred yards from where we were 
standing, tearing a hole in the ground as 
big as a small room. That was close 
enough for me; I thought of the wounds 
I had seen at the Majestic; of my home 
and mother, the girl I left behind me, and 
everything else. The officer said it was 
from one of their 202 m.m. guns (eight 
inches) and that it had been fired from a 
distance of about ten kilometers.* 

* When shells come from a long distance, as these 
did, they lose some of their spin and steadiness of 
flight and begin to turn on their long axis. The re- 
sult is a very curious sound, wow — wow— wow — wow, 
which increases in intensity as the shell comes nearer. 

At short ranges, the shell travels faster than sound; 



98 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

I said, "Suppose they send the next 
one a little wide — it might come right on 
top of us." 

"Yes," he said, "but it is not likely; 
they don't often put them over this way." 

While we were talking, another one 
came in about the same spot. It nearly 
took us off our feet. I looked at the officer. 
Nobody was smiling now. 

"Look here," I said, "let's get out of 
this." And we got. 

October ii: 

We completed the work of installing our 
equipment. M., one of the nurses who 
came last night, is a good executive; she 

but at long ranges, when it has lost its initial velocity, 
the noise of an approaching shell is audible for several 
seconds before it arrives. This has enabled many men 
to save their lives. The force of these big shells is 
tremendous; there are several instances of death caused 
by concussion alone. 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 99 

knows how to give orders to those slipshod 
French soldiers, and gets lots of work out 
of them. 

At 2 P. M. all the rest of the party arrived 
with nearly everything that we possessed. 
J. and DeQ. also came from the Majestic, 
as I had arranged for them to come and 
help us out during the first week. 

We unloaded the ambulances and had 
supper. As we were finishing, a general 
artillery and infantry battle began on the 
hill two miles away. There was incessant 
firing of cannon and rattle of small arms. 
As soon as we had finished, the French 
officers came up and asked if we wanted to 
see some of it. All the new men were, 
of course, crazy to get there. They all 
wanted to "see some action." It was 
almost dark, but off we started. 

We walked for a long way closer and 



100 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

closer toward the firing; it was through a 
narrow road in the woods, and as dark as 
a pocket. I asked the ofiicers when we 
should get out of the woods so we could 
see something, and they did not seem to 
know quite where we were. We finally got 
very close to it. The ofiicers began to get 
nervous and suggested that we had better 
be careful about sentries as they did not 
know the password, and that if we were 
challenged and did not give it right off", 
we should be shot at. 

R. and I were slightly ahead of the rest, 
and we stopped and hid in the bushes by 
the side of the road. In a moment they 
had all come up and were about to pass us, 
when we jumped up and shouted, "Qui 
vive?" at the top of our lungs. 

The effect was tremendous. 

"La France, La France," yelled the officers. 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS loi 

"Don't shoot," yelled someone .in Eng- 
lish. 

N. and G. flung themselves on the ground 
to escape the expected fusillade and the rest 
stood rooted to their tracks. That sobered 
everybody up thoroughly, and we turned 
around and went home. It was a sort of 
wild goose chase, anyway; we had just been 
looking for trouble and it was not our fault 
that we did not find it. J. said that when 
he heard that "Qui vive!" every particu- 
lar hair on his head stood straight up on 
end. 

October 12: 

Six wounded soldiers, our first patients, 
were brought in at about 10 o'clock this 
morning, all of them pretty bad. Every- 
thing was ready, and three of them needed 
operating. 



102 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

The first man had a gunshot wound, the 
ball traversing the front of the abdomen, 
apparently without having penetrated much 
deeper than an inch below the skin. There 
were no fractures, the mouths of both 
wounds had been seared up with iodine, 
but the man had been lying in a dressing 
station in his clothes for five days. He 
had a temperature; a high pulse; had been 
vomiting, and looked bad. 

When we took the bandage off, W. said: 
"Oh! well! I guess we had better leave that 
alone, hadn't we?" 

"My inclination would be to open it up 
and see what is there," said J., "but, of 
course, do as you think best." 

"All right," replied W., "it won't do any 
harm." 

W. took the knife and started to cut across 
the body, cutting with the blade of the 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 103 

knife upward and upon a guide. After he 
had been at work two minutes, he had gone 
about two inches. 

J. said, *'I think that incision ought to be 
carried about six inches further this way. 
Just give me that knife a moment, will you, 
old chap?" 

He took the knife and from that moment 
conducted the operation himself. The min- 
ute we got the abdomen open, it was quite 
plain that J. had been right. The large 
intestine had been perforated in several 
places, and the entire inside of the man was 
chock full of fecal matter, rotten blood, 
and pus. "For Heaven's sake, light a cigar, 
Toland," said J. 

We took all the intestines out and put 
them in a basin wrapped in hot towels and 
did what we could; washing and cleaning 
out everything inside of him, but J. says 



I04 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

that he has been too long without attention 
to have much chance. 

The next man was a German officer — a 
Prussian who had been hit below the knee 
by a piece of a shrapnel casing. He had 
been between the lines, and had lain on 
the battlefield for seven days without food 
and water. How they stand it, I cannot 
see. The leg was, of course, beyond hope 
of repair; the bone was smashed to pieces 
four inches below the knee; the leg nearly 
off and turned out at an angle of 15° and 
so rotten that it was black. W. was busy, 
so J. had me give him the anaesthetic. It 
was the first one I had ever given, but 
with J. there to tell me what to do if any- 
thing happened, I felt quite confident; 
giving a chloroform anaesthetic and watch- 
ing the condition of the patient is not a 
difficult thing to do. 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 105 

October /j; 

We now have about as many patients as we 
can hold, mostly colored troops from Sene- 
gal. I was on night duty last night. At 
about five o'clock in the morning, just as 
it was beginning to turn dawn, a little 
French caporal came in to the chateau, 
and said that there were some wounded 
outside for us. I supposed they would be 
brought in in the usual way — on stretchers 
— and started around the wards to see that 
everything was all right. 

I suddenly had a feeling that somebody 
was looking at me. I wheeled around and 
there was an enormous black man, stand- 
ing on one leg by the side of the door, 
staring at me. I did not know whether he 
spoke French or Swahali, but upon address- 
ing him in the former language I found he 
was pretty good at it. I went to the door. 



io6 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

There was a heavy fog hanging over the 
place and through the gloom of the early- 
October morning, I saw two of the old 
fashioned beet carts with their huge wheels 
and long bodies. From these, men were 
climbing down. No waiting to be carried 
for these fellows! Two of them were com- 
ing up the stone steps on their hands and 
knees; another was crawling on his hands 
and knees along the gravel walk; several 
were walking; and a couple hopping on one 
leg. 

Most of them had bad wounds, and one 
was still bleeding freely from the shoulder. 
There were forty-one all told, and they all 
had been wounded In the night attack which 
we had been hearing ever since midnight. 

One of the first we attended to, had a 
shrapnel bullet through his shoulder. There 
was no wound of exit, and, just as J. was 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 107 

starting to bandage him up for evacuation, 
he said, "Hello, here is the bullet, right 
here." He put my finger on a spot on the 
man's arm. There was an imperceptible 
little bump, but he said that it was the 
bullet, and very close under the skin, too. 
"I'll get that out right now," he said, and 
took his knife and, without giving the man 
either a local or general anaesthetic, made 
a two-inch incision. 

"Oh, la, la," shouted the blackamoor, 
"mais qu'est-ce que tu fais.^" 

"Restez tranquil, Monsieur; je vais oter 
la balle," replied JoU, with a grand gesture 
and magnificent accent. 

"C'est bien," he answered, "allez done." 

JoU cut a little more, put in a probe and 
out came the ball — a couple of stitches, and 
it was all over in certainly less than twenty 
seconds. These fellows have good nerve; 



io8 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

the man never budged after the first 
start. 

They tell me that the Senegalis charged 
here with the bayonet last week, and when 
they had their hands shot off, they kept on 
and bit the Germans with their teeth. 
There is a story that at Montereau some 
time past, a Senegali was brought in 
wounded. When they undressed him, he 
had something large under his coat which 
he was hiding; he did not want to take it 
out, it was a little souvenir he had got from 
the battlefield — a German's helmet, and 
the head of the German was inside it! Some 
of them have also collected strings of Ger- 
mans' ears. 

The French boys who work in the cha- 
teau are perfectly hopeless; they are willing 
enough, but too simple to do any real 
work. One of them filled the kerosene lamp 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 109 

with gasoline the other night and lighted it. 
I arrived just in time to save the house 
from catching fire. You start them on one 
job and ten minutes afterwards they have 
dropped it and are doing something else or 
nothing else. We have no organization or 
system. Our material is not classified and 
nobody knows where anything is. It is very 
annoying and makes a great deal of un- 
necessary work. Besides that, nobody has 
had any definite work assigned to him, 
no instructions are given to anyone, and 
the place is in a chaotic state. 

I was on night duty to-night again with 
S. and had a terrible time. The place was 
packed with men, and six nurses with four 
orderlies would not have been too many. 
Four men were dying — one delirious and 
yelling at the top of his lungs. It was 
ghastly. I know that neither of us sat 



no THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

down for more than ten minutes the whole 
night. It was a continual run from begin- 
ning to end. The supplies not being sorted 
out and arranged, made it twice as bad. 
Nothing could be found when it was needed. 
No kerosene, not enough candles, no mack- 
intosh. The morphine could not be found 
at all. The furnace fire went out and I had 
to go down and rebuild it. The kitchen 
stove fire went out and I had to rebuild it, 
too. We had about ten men who were 
out of their heads, and who should have 
been watched. There were men all over 
the house, in the first, second and third 
stories; five out of ten men had dysentery, 
so it can be imagined what it was like. 
One French soldier died during the night; 
he did not have any chance, it was an 
abdominal wound which had gone through 
everything. He was quite conscious all 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS iii 

the time and before he died, called me to 
him, and gave me some little messages for 
his wife. He was only about twenty-four. 
Another head case died at 7 in the morning 
and two more will probably die during the 
day. The head case that died had oral 
aphasia; he could understand what you 
said to him, but could not talk himself. 
He tried hard enough, but the words meant 
nothing. He could only talk gibberish. 

We cannot have another night like that. 
It is not right. We have got to do one of 
two things — get all the patients on one 
floor, or else have three divisions of nurses 
and orderlies, one for each of the three 
floors. I got to bed at noon and slept till 
five o'clock. 

When I came down stairs I was met in 
the hall by the little French priest. 

"Oh, Monsieur," he said, "there are six 



112 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

poor Germans out there in a little outhouse, 
and, oh. Monsieur, they are so cold, and 
cannot you have a fire made for them, or 
do something for them?" 

I said that I did not know that there 
were any Germans in the place, and asked 
when they had been brought there. He 
said he thought they had been there a 
couple of hours. 

I asked: "Has nothing been done for 
them-f* Is nobody down there.?" 

"No," he replied, "and, oh. Monsieur, it 
is so damp and cold and they are suffering ter- 
ribly, please have something done for them!" 

I went into the operating room, and there 
was W. with the six new surgeons who had 
just arrived, watching J. operate. 

"Doctor," I said, "the priest tells me 
that there are some Germans down in the 
barn who need attention." 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 113 

"Oh, yes, yes," he said, "that's so." 

"Well," I continued, "the priest says 
they are very cold and that there is nobody 
there." 

"That is right," he replied, "I guess there 
isn't. Well, you just go down there and 
fix them up and superintend all that, won't 
you?" 

"I didn't know they were there until five 
minutes ago;" I said, "what do you want 
done — are you going to keep them there 
all night, or move them up to the house?" 

"Oh, well," he answered, "I can't quite 
tell about that yet, but you just go down 
and do what you can." 

I went down to the stables, and there 
were the six poor devils lying on stretchers. 
It was a little one-story stone house, with 
no floor, so they were on the ground. 
There was a cold drizzling rain falling and 



114 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

moisture had collected all over the walls. 
The place was damp and clammy as a 
sewer. The next room had an old broken 
stove in it, and was chock full of furniture 
and rubbish. I did not even know whether 
the stove would burn. I went back to the 
operating room and said, "Doctor, I will 
have to have two or three men to help me 
do that work, or I won't get it done for 
two hours." All of the four new aides 
immediately volunteered to help. 

We cleaned the room out, swept the floor, 
hunted about until we found some kindling 
and coal, and finally got the fire going. In 
the meantime, those Germans were lying 
on the ground with practically no clothes 
on; two of them had their legs entirely 
bare as their trousers had been cut off when 
the wounds had been dressed. They were 
in a bad way from the cold, apart from 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 115 

their wounds. I got a dozen empty claret 
bottles, filled them with hot water and sent 
up for hot bouillon and blankets. 

One of the new men is Neil Stevens, 
Yale '11 of Morristown, N. J., who was 
with me at St. Paul's School. We were so 
busy working, that we did not recognize 
each other for fifteen minutes. The other 
aides are Edwin Pyle, Williams '11, of New 
York, Benjamin R. Allison, Dartmouth 'ii, 
of New York, and Mather Cleveland, 
Yale '11, of Denver. 

The idea in putting the Germans down 
there was from the little French General B., 
who said that all septic cases must be con- 
fined to a separate building. 

We have not sufficient staff to give those 
Germans any attention where they are now, 
and putting them there is quite unneces- 
sary. All French hospitals put septic cases 



ii6 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

in with their other patients. The poor 
Germans are a pathetic lot — two of them, 
boys of about seventeen. 

I took two big heavy blankets and 
wrapped them round the bare legs of one 
of the men. He took my hand and kissed 
it! 

One of the lads in the chateau here told 
me that when the Germans were in it a 
month ago, the men slept on the kitchen 
floor. When the officer came to wake them 
up, he just walked in and kicked them. 

The woman working here said that when 
Von Kluck's army marched along the road 
in front of the chateau, which they did 
for fourteen hours, an officer walked be- 
hind the lines and hit the men on the heads 
with a little stick if they were out of line. 
One fellow had gotten out of step. A close- 
cropped officer ran up and spat in his face. 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 117 

Poor fellows, they are like a lot of ill- 
treated animals, not knowing whether to 
expect a kind word or a kick. 

Our organization or lack of organization 
is shocking. Generally speaking, no in- 
structions come from the chief surgeon or 
head nurse about anything. There is no 
regular assignment of duties to anyone 
except the chauffeurs, of whom R. is in 
charge. 

In the medical department we need one 
or two first-class operating surgeons, and 
four extra nurses to do this work. There 
is no history of our work, or our diagnoses, 
sent on with the patients to permanent 
hospitals. This is unbusiness like, and the 
information which we have gathered is 
wasted. 

In the cuisine, the meals are irregular 
and a la carte; that is, people come down 



ii8 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

at any old time and order any old thing 
they want; there is much unnecessary 
work, due to lack of uniform practice. 
The chef has no help and works from 6 A. M. 
to II P. M. He has the French boys, but 
they are hardly any use. 

In the transportation department there 
has been no work done in planning the 
routine for breaking and making camps. 
This is of vital importance. If we were 
to be told to-night that the Germans were 
coming in three hours, the only things we 
could get out of the hospital, would be 
the automobiles and the personnel of the 
staff; every bit of our equipment would 
have to be left behind. 

They have got a French battery on the 
hill behind us now, which sends shells al- 
most over the roof. We are within easy 
range of the German cannon. I think the 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 119 

place is getting too hot to hold us. Last 
night when they were shooting, a candle 
fell off the table. The house often shakes, 
so that it seems impossible for the windows 
not to break, but none has as yet. 

October 15: 

J. and I took a short walk this morning 
after dressings and saw a German aero- 
plane being fired on by the French batteries. 
It was about two miles from us. The Ger- 
man aeroplane flew over the French lines 
and dropped three smoke bombs about a 
hundred yards apart. They explode quite 
high in the air, leaving a trail of smoke. 
This gives the German artillery their line 
of fire. The last bomb had hardly dropped, 
when the French batteries opened on it. 
We could see the shrapnel shells of the 
batteries explode near the aeroplane dis- 



120 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

tinctly. They leave little puffs of smoke, 
which remain hanging in the air. I don't 
believe they came very close to it, though. 
The aeroplane was not hit, and continued 
on. It was quite high up. 

DeQuelen, who is a Frenchman, had an 
adventure in the ambulance last night. 
They were stopped by a sentry. He said: 
"In my best French, I was unable to satisfy 
him with my pronunciation of the password. 
He said that I spoke with a German accent. 
Both of them immediately pointed their 
guns at us full cock, and it was only by 
my thorough knowledge of French cursing 
that I was able to convince him of my na- 
tionality." This is a bit dangerous as 
some of these fellows are pretty quick on 
the trigger. There have been lots of people 
shot by sentries in England. 

These French territorial sentries are a 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 121 

dumb lot; when I was at Montdidier, an 
officious old boy, who had evidently just 
been put on, halted me. I gave him the 
"Mot," but he had to see my "Carte 
d'identite" too. He scowled at the photo- 
graph, scowled at me; looked back and 
forth comparing my face with that of the 
photograph and at last said suspiciously, 

"You were younger when that was 
taken?" 

"No, sir," I replied, "I was older." 

"Bien passez!" he grunted. 

The Ambassador of the United States, 
Mr. Herrick, came out to pay us a visit 
this afternoon. It just happened that the 
old General B. arrived at the same moment, 
and we asked him whether the Germans 
could not be moved from the little out- 
house, up to the chateau. Yes, you bet 
they could be moved; and there was noth- 



122 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

ing the old boy would not have done for 
us while Mr. Herrick was there. 

When we brought the Germans Into the 
chateau, there was an unexpected scene; 
a couple of blackamoors almost sprang 
from their beds. The sight of the Germans 
put them in a frenzy of excitement and they 
commenced jabbering at each other in their 
native language, with their eyes almost 
popping out of their heads. I guess a 
couple of them would have been out of 
bed and at the Germans, if we had left 
the room. They cannot understand why, 
if they can kill the Germans on the battle- 
field, it is not all right to go for them, 
when you have them in the same room and 
down on the floor. After an hour, we 
thought it best to move the Germans into 
another room. To say that they felt re- 
lieved, is putting it mildly. 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 123 

Fifteen patients were evacuated to Com- 
piegne to-day and four died during the 
night. It seems to me that some of those 
fellows we evacuated were pretty sick men. 

October 16: 

Neil Stevens and I got together and 
drew up an organization chart this morning 
and made out a schedule showing details 
of regular routine: meal hours, dressings, 
day and night shifts, etc. We showed it 
to the chief surgeon, who approved it. We 
may have a little regularity at last. 

We are pretty full now and this morning 
we had to move the old Prussian officer, 
to whom I gave the anaesthetic, from the 
second floor down to the first floor. We 
thought he would like to go in with some 
of his own German soldiers, and accordingly 
took him into the ward where there were 



124 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

six of them. When he saw where he was 
going, he said in French, 

"What are you bringing me in here for?" 

I said, "We thought you would like to 
see some of your comrades from the Vater- 
land." 

"H'm," he muttered, "I would rather 
have stayed where I was." 

He thereupon turned his back upon his 
own men, refusing even to speak to them. 
An hour or two later, he called the nurse 
over to him. 

"Come here," he said in a rough voice, 
"these men over here are asking a great 
deal too much, do not pay so much atten- 
tion to them. They are imposing on you. 
Of course, if I ask you for anything it is 
a very different proposition, but these fel- 
lows are not worth it, don't bother about 
them." 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 125 

One of the new surgeons has his eye in- 
fected and it looks alarming. Very much 
swollen. We have to be careful. R. will 
not even pick up the end of a stretcher 
now without first hunting up his gloves 
and putting them on. Everything about 
this place is infected and smells of wounded 
soldiers. It is no joke to have a cut on 
your hands. 

October 28: 

We have now been moved to Compiegne 
by order of the general staff and have been 
here two days. 

The Palace is being used as a hospital for 
pneumonia and typhoids. All the bridges 
have been blown up and we cross the Oise 
on pontoons which are crowded with con- 
tinuous lines of troops. 

Most of us went to the English Church 



126 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

Service this morning. While we were sitting 
there a German aeroplane flew over Com- 
piegne and dropped six bombs on the town. 
One of them landed in the street 150 yards 
from us. We think it was caused by Cleve 
singing tenor to the hymns! The Germans 
can put up with a good deal, but when they 
heard that, they couldn't stand it any longer. 
The one that landed close to us was a 
shrapnel bomb, and one other also; the 
rest were "bombes d'incendie," which fell 
in places where they did not cause any 
"incendie." There must be a good many 
kinds of aeroplane bombs. This one only 
tore a hole in the street about eight inches 
deep, and two feet in diameter. There 
were no windows broken and no damage 
done to the adjoining property worth men- 
tioning, and nobody was hurt, although 
there were some people within fifty yards 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 127 

of where it fell. The one which dropped in 
the Avenue du Trocadero in Paris, however, 
almost wrecked the entire block; every 
window for a hundred yards each side of 
it was broken, and I saw stones the size 
of my little finger nail, driven an inch into 
a tree, eighty yards from the point of ex- 
plosion. On the whole, however, aeroplane 
bombs are ineffective; they never hit what 
they are aimed at, and the number that 
can be taken up is limited. 

Mrs. Depew, an American living near here, 
has turned her chateau into a field hospital. 
It is beautifully equipped. 

Compiegne is a pretty little place and 
while we were there the leaves were all 
turning red and golden; the air was crisp 
and cool, and there were continuous streams 
of every kind of troops passing through 
the place; in fact, that is why we were 



128 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

delayed there. The Front was changing 
and it could not be well determined where 
to locate. We saw aeroplanes every day, 
French and German both. Saw them fired 
on by batteries of both sides. The artillery 
used to unlimber and hide under the trees 
on each side of the road during the day and 
do their marching at night — this on account 
of the German aeroplanes which would see 
them if they were moving in the daytime. 



PART IV 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS AT 
MONTDIDIER 

November i: 

LAST night Mr. Harjcs arrived from 
I Paris with orders for us to join the 
Fourth Army Corps at Montdidier, where, 
we are told, there are a large number of 
wounded to be looked after. 

At ten o'clock in the morning we started 
off with our six ambulances, two private 
cars. Dr. W. — a new surgeon, — a new chauf- 
feur, and two additional nurses. 

We arrived at our chateau a couple of 

hours later. It is in the country two miles 

from Montdidier, and belongs to Monsieur 

Klotz, the present Minister of Finance of 

the Republic. He does not live in it often, 

and, I have since been given to understand, 
131 



132 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

uses it only as a sort of voting residence, 
as it is in his district. It is a shabby old 
house, without modern conveniences, and 
none too clean, especially after having been 
lived in by both the French and German 
soldiers for some time. We got our equip- 
ment out of the machines and distributed 
it in good order. 

The place is fairly well arranged for a 
hospital. There are three big rooms, all 
adjoining each other on the first floor, with 
a small hall between them. These three 
large rooms we will use as wards; they will 
each hold about ten patients. There are 
two other small rooms leading ofl" them 
which we will use as operating room and 
medical supply room. We eat in the 
kitchen, as usual, and the rooms for the 
staff take up the second and third floors. 
None of the staff's rooms are heated, and 




a-. 



U 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 133 

there is running water only in the kitchen 
and a couple of rooms on the first floor. 
All of the water has to be pumped by hand. 

November 2: 

This afternoon we had an inspection by 
the Medecin Chef of the local district — 
that is, Montdidier and some ten miles 
on each side. He seems to be a good 
executive and disciplinarian. He brought 
with him L., the chief surgeon of the big 
hospital at Montdidier. They went over 
everything in the hospital, and spoke right 
up and told us what they liked and did not 
like, made a few suggestions, but said that 
on the whole our installation was excep- 
tionally good. 

November 2: 

Went to Montdidier this morning to get 
patients to fill our hospital. Upon return- 



134 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

ing after our first trip to the chateau, the 
Medecin Chef told us that all our ambu- 
lances would be needed immediately for 
urgent work on the field, as he had just 
received a message that there were over a 
thousand wounded at various points all 
along the line between here and Roye. 
All our automobiles were immediately 
brought to the station, I driving No. 6, a 
Packard 30. Here we received instructions 
to go to some six First-Aid Stations directly 
behind the trenches. We first were sent to 
a place called Fecamps. It was a little 
cluster of about twenty houses, barns, 
etc. . . . and there were some three hun- 
dred wounded there, who had been and 
were being brought in from the trenches 
one-half a mile away. The worst cases 
were lying on straw in the small outhouses, 
barns and cottages that the furniture had 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 135 

been cleared out of. There were about 
twenty dead already. Two more were 
dying and there were several others with 
awful undressed wounds. One with a leg 
nearly off at the hip. Another blind in 
both eyes and his chin shot away. It was 
too horrible to enlarge upon. 

If it had not been for the Harjes Am- 
bulance Corps that day, they would cer- 
tainly have been up against it, on handling 
two hundred and fifty lying down cases. 
The people at Montdidier had no equip- 
ment to speak of, for handling lying down 
cases, while our five 6-stretcher Packards 
brought in thirty on each trip. If it had 
not been for us, half of their lying down 
cases would have had to stay there over- 
night, and half of those that stayed, would 
surely have died. It was very cold. There 
were wounded men everywhere! Every 



136 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

road we took, we would pass men coming 
in on donkey carts, beet wagons and every 
other available vehicle in the surrounding 
country that could be pressed into service. 
Sixteen hundred wounded were sent into 
Montdidier that day, and two hundred 
and fifty of the worst were brought in by 
us. If we do no other work, to-day justifies 
our existence. I think we have saved the 
lives of at least one hundred men. A Ger- 
man aeroplane was directly over us at one 
place, and quite low down; it was being 
fired on by the French batteries and mi- 
trailleuses the whole time. Some of the 
shells came very close to it. We were quite 
near enough to see the flash of the powder 
in daytime. Unfortunately it escaped. 

At a place called Wassy, there was a 
little church where we got a lot of wounded. 
It was just like a scene in a play. The 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 137 

pews were piled up against the wall outside; 
the whole floor was covered with straw; 
and the wounded men were lying about 
everywhere; a little priest giving the last 
rites to a dying man in the corner; the 
place dimly lit by candles; the little china 
Madonnas standing on the shelves. The 
mud, the uniforms, and everything else, 
was just as you would expect to find it; 
and up at the end of the street not a hun- 
dred yards from us, was a company of 
French infantry in position. In the after- 
noon, before it grew dark, you could see 
over the valley where some French infantry 
were along a fence three-quarters of a mile 
away, and every once in a while the little 
puff of smoke of a bursting shrapnel would 
appear above them. It seemed like a 
dream, and I could hardly realize that war 
was going on right under my eyes and 



138 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

that those men out there were doing the 
same thing and getting the same wounds, 
as the ones who now lay in front of us on 
the straw. 

It was a big day at Montdidier station. 
The station itself is a First-Aid Hospital, 
and literally every square foot of the plat- 
form, interior and all about it was packed 
with men on stretchers, while the other 
wounded men walked and hobbled about, 
or sat on the curbs waiting for the trains. 
The old Medecin Chef was right on the 
job all the time, and nothing moved without 
his orders. He had the whole situation 
at his finger ends. They tell me that he 
had every soldier out of the station at 
twelve o'clock that night except about 
twelve cases that transportation undoubt- 
edly would have killed. All the wounded 
were sent from here to Creil, where they 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 139 

are redespatched to permanent hospitals 
all over France. The Medecin Chef says 
that it is the one great drawback of the 
system, in so much as that when he puts 
them on the cars here, he does not know 
whether they are going to travel for twenty- 
four hours or eighty-four hours; all he can 
do is, grade the wounded, — from the most 
serious to the least serious; and send them 
through with that information. All the 
hospitals in Montdidier, including ours, 
are, of course, loaded to capacity, and there 
is no more room for anyone else in this 
town. 

November 6: 

There has been another big battle last 
night. I could hear the guns from about 
quarter to eleven until after one continu- 
ously, — the mitrailleuse and rifle fire were 



I40 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

as steady as the roar of the ocean, and the 
heavier cannon firing was incessant. Each 
shot from the soixante-quinzes costs ten 
dollars, and from the one hundred and 
fifty-fives, thirty-five dollars! 

Steve and I got up at four this morning, 
and reported to the Medecin Chef at five 
thirty, as per order. There is no firing now. 
We are again sent to Fescamps, but there 
are not as many wounded as we had ex- 
pected, only about forty, and only half a 
dozen of them serious. The men said 
that the Germans had attempted an ad- 
vance which was repulsed; and that they 
had lost heavily, while the French losses 
had been slight. The Germans, they said, 
got into the French barbed wire entangle- 
ments, where they stuck and were shot by 
the French on one side, while their own 
artillery dropped shells among them from 




The Author. 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 141 

the other side. This is not uncommon, 
many men of both sides are wounded by 
their own shells. 

The Medecin Chef kept all our automo- 
biles waiting at the station all day long, 
in case he should receive further orders, 
but the orders were not forthcoming and 
we did nothing. We hear that thirty of the 
one thousand and six hundred died on the 
trains before reaching Creil. It is terrible, 
but there was nothing else to do — every- 
thing here is loaded to capacity. 

November 8: 

Helped with the dressings this morning. 
We certainly have a prize collection of bad 
cases here; nineteen out of twenty-three 
are thoroid cases, with half of them para- 
plegia — that is, both legs paralyzed. We 
have one German soldier. The poor cuss 



142 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

IS like most other soldiers of Von Kluck's 
army that I have seen — worked to death! 
He is as thin as a rail and his body is 
covered with eczema and other varieties 
of skin diseases. Besides that, he is shot 
through the kidneys and spine, and has his 
skull fractured. 

W. wants me to take charge of hospital 
stores entirely and to act as purchasing 
agent. The stores are in a mess, and need 
someone to straighten them out and keep 
them in good order. 

November g: 

Helped at the dressings again this morn- 
ing. W. trephined the German who had a 
large gutter fracture of the skull. There 
were very few loose fragments and the 
operation can hardly help him. He will 
surely die in a day or so, he is absolutely 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 143 

"all in"; both of his legs are paralyzed, 
too. 

Moved all the stores from the first floor 
to the second, where there are three small 
rooms better suited for them than the 
present one; classified them and disposed 
of the stuff that we do not want. 

Had a splendid meal this evening. One 
of the biggest assets we have, is our chef. 
You can go into the best restaurants in 
London or Paris and not get one bit better 
food than we are getting in this old dirty 
chateau. The chef is a wonder; he works 
from six in the morning until eleven at 
night, and seems to be perfectly O. K. 

November 10: 

Saw the poor German before I went to 
bed. He had been moved to a little room 
by himself and is there alone, dying, in a 



144 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

strange country among strange people. He 
was semi-conscious, and as I stood beside 
him he looked up at me in a dreamy way 
and murmured, "Ah meine arme, arme 
mutter!'' He is cold and has hardly any 
pulse, so it is only a question of a few hours. 

November ii: 

Slept badly and got up at 4 A. M. and 
read "Pan-Germanism" in the kitchen. 

At 6 A. M. Cleve, who is night orderly 
this week, came and said that the German 
had just died, and asked if I would help 
take him out to the mortuary. 

I suppose I have handled about forty or 
fifty dead men since I have been here, but 
this was the most extreme case of rigor 
mortis I have seen. Cleve said that the 
man had only stopped breathing fifteen 
minutes ago. He was absolutely as stiff 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 145 

as a poker. I put my hands under the 
back of his neck, and Cleve took his feet, 
and we lifted him from the bed to the 
stretcher as though he had been a log of 
wood. Cleve said that this is usually due 
to degeneration of tissue through fatigue 
and bad condition. We took the poor 
fellow out in the gray dawn to the little 
outhouse which was being used as a mor- 
tuary, and laid him at his last rest beside 
a French soldier. 

To-day is the first clear day we have had 
for a week. The weather has been dis- 
agreeable and rainy ever since we have been 
here. 

November 14: 

About three in the afternoon the Medecin 
Chef sent for all of our cars again, and as 
we were short of a chauffeur I was detailed 



146 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

to car No. 9. When we got to the station they 
had fifty men to take to Breteuil — twenty- 
two kilometers west of us. We got them 
there in two trips, and I hope I never have 
any more like them. I almost froze, but 
the patients told me they were not cold. 
They were pretty well protected from the 
weather, and the interior of the ambulances 
kept warm by the heat of their bodies. 
The French sergeant who went out there 
with me was telling me about the trenches. 
He said that most of the men have been 
in the same positions for a month now 
and have made them almost like under- 
ground houses; that you can drop a shell 
right on them and not hurt anybody. 
When they hear one coming they all duck 
inside. They have mattresses and beds in 
some of them, and it is practically impos- 
sible for either side to dislodge the other. 




.Z-J 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 147 

I don't believe there is going to be much 
doing until Spring; there have not been 
any wounded to speak of in our Army- 
Corps since November 5, and the 13 th Army- 
Corps next to us gets only a few. 

November ly: 

In Paris to purchase supplies and drive 
out a new car. Shopped all morning, and 
most of the afternoon, and then stopped 
in at the Majestic Hotel Hospital to see 
Joll, who is now in charge of it. He took 
me through the wards and showed me all 
the old patients whom I had left there six 
weeks ago. 

I don't know when I have felt so strongly 
as at seeing these men again. It was mar- 
vellous! Most of them were almost well, 
and all of them were far on the road to 
recovery. The boy with the side of his 



148 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

face half gone, I did not know, when he 
spoke to me. The swelling had entirely 
disappeared, and he spoke as clearly as 
I do. JoU said the wound had nearly 
closed. Harry Bell looked like a different 
man. His leg was in a patent adjustable 
splint that Joll had recently invented, and 
was nearly well. Joll showed it to me in 
detail — an unusual but evidently effective 
device. Two spikes or nails were driven 
through the leg; one through the bone of 
the femur and the other through the joint 
of the knee, on each side of the fracture. 
Either a longitudinal or rotary movement 
could be accomplished by turnbuckles. 
There was no shortening of the leg at all 
now, whereas, when I left, the leg was be- 
tween two and two and a half inches shorter 
than the other. It is wonderful! 

Two head cases were up and walking 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 149 

about the wards, and another man was 
pushing a chair. He spoke to me and I 
did not know him. It was the French 
soldier with the broken shoulder and the 
two bayonet wounds in the stomach that 
were discharging fecal matter, — now en- 
tirely well. vJTears came into my eyes as I 
shook his hand, I hadn't expected ever to 
see him alive again. The little English boy 
with the perforating wound of the left 
thorax had put on ten pounds and waved 
at me from across the room, as if he had 
never known what it was to be sick. Every 
other bed had a new face on it, and the 
men who had been there when I left, had 
got well and had been sent home. 

The last man I saw was the English 
Captain Seabrooke with the terrible leg, 
that I helped dress every day for two weeks. 
Joll said I would be surprised when I saw 



ISO THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

him; but I was hardly prepared for the 
rosy-cheeked, splendid looking fellow in the 
bed I had bent over so many times. He 
too had put on at least ten pounds. A 
lump came in my throat and I could hardly 
speak to him. The wound that they used 
to take a basin full of stuffing out of, is 
now only two inches long on each side. 
His wife was there, and she is going to take 
him back to England in a couple of weeks 
to walk again, within six months. 

It was a very impressive hour. There in 
front of the eyes of those men and women 
were the tangible results of the work that 
they had been faithfully doing, day and 
night for two months past; the realization 
of their training and toil. Suffering alle- 
viated, hearts gladdened, and limbs and 
lives saved. Can there be greater satisfac- 
tion in any vocation? 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 151 

November 21: 

They have at last got a plumber from 
Montdidier to drain the cesspool at the 
east end of the house. It had overflowed 
into the cellar where it is four inches deep, 
under Ward No. i. I discovered this on 
November 14th, a week ago, and called 
attention to it then, but nothing has 
been done until to-day. Our drinking water 
comes from a twelve-foot well in the cellar 
fifty feet from this cesspool. There is also 
another cesspool fifty feet from it, on the 
north side of the house, and a waste drain- 
age well in the yard, fifty feet to the south. 
The soil is sandy and porous. Our drinking 
supply is, therefore, in the center of three 
waste wells at short distances from them; 
one of which is now overflowing. I con- 
sider this situation dangerous. Everything 
about this old place is filthy, and there is 



152 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

no telling what the Germans did when they 
were here. 

November 22: 

Out of kerosene, coal and gasolene all 
at the same time. G. drains a couple of 
the other cars and is despatched to Com- 
piegne to replenish our supply. 

We run short simply because W. will not 
appoint anyone housekeeper, and therefore 
no one looks after these things. It is very 
annoying and unnecessary. 

November 2/1.: 

We ran out of coal again last night. 

G. had only bought five hundred pounds 

two days ago, and at nine o'clock at night, 

it was discovered that there wasn't another 

bit in the house! Steve and G. searched 

everywhere, but half a scuttleful was all 

they could get. It looked as if we shouldn't 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 153 

get any breakfast in the morning, and there 
wouldn't be any fire in the furnace for the 
patients after midnight. 

The chef, wise man, had, however, fore- 
seen just such an emergency, and had 
hidden away enough coal for just one meal 
— about two scuttlesful. This he produced 
at the psychological moment, and the pa- 
tients and ourselves got a hot breakfast, 
although the furnace fire did go out. For- 
tunately, the cold snap has abated some- 
what, and the wards, although chilly, were 
not cold enough to be dangerous. 

November 26: 

Thanksgiving Day and busy all the day 
long with all sorts of odd jobs about the 
house. We are to have a big Thanksgiving 
dinner to-night, and M. and I made a big 
pitcher of apple toddy for the occasion. 



154 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

Nearly everyone congregated in the medical 
supplies room in front of the fire, and the 
pitcher kept going the rounds for almost 
an hour before supper. At half past six 
we all went together to the kitchen for 
our Thanksgiving dinner which was mag- 
nificent. The chef outdid himself. B. had 
brought out two turkeys, which were 
specially selected for us by the head waiter 
at Maxim's. Toasts to Mr. and Mrs. Harjes 
and the chef were drunk, and the feast 
went off with great eclat, 

December j-8: 

Nothing of particular interest has hap- 
pened. Have seen Dill Starr of Phila- 
delphia who tells me he is going to join 
the British Army and will leave for London 
in a week. He is to be with one of the 
armored motors. 





3 a> 

Wo 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 155 

Last night there was a bit of domestic 
excitement. The chef got so drunk that 
he was hardly able to cook supper. I 
don't blame him a bit! The man has been 
under quite a strain for the past two months. 
He has been working sixteen hours a day, 
under very irritating circumstances and is 
nervous and upset. 

What ought to be done is to let the chef 
go to Paris for a week and have a good 
spree and change of scene. He has been 
on the job steadily since the beginning of 
October, doing work that is enough to 
drive anyone to drink. 

We don't want to fire him, and there is 
no necessity for it. If we keep him on, it 
will just mean repetitions of this sort of thing, 
until he gets it out of his system. I say let 
him go to Paris and get so soused that he 
won't want to do it again for six months. 



IS6 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

December I'j: 

I was talking to Offert last night, and 
he told me about how he got wounded. 
It was in the big advance on Andichy, in 
the early part of November. The story 
is characteristic of the infancry advance 
against entrenched positions in modern 
warfare. He said the men were ordered 
from their trenches about ten in the morn- 
ing, in broad daylight, and told to ad- 
vance. They got up and went toward the 
German position in extended order, with 
the usual interval of about five or ten feet, 
advancing by rushes. He said that they 
never saw a German; they never saw any 
smoke; they just walked into one continual 
hail of bullets and shrapnel. Most of the 
men did not even fire their guns off. There 
was nothing to shoot at. They kept on 
for some six hundred yards, and when they 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 157 

had lost two thousand men, gave it up and 
came back. 

First got hit in the ankle. "That's 
enough for me," he said to himself, and 
seeing a dead horse fifteen yards away, 
thought, "If I can get behind that horse, 
I will be safe." lie tried to crawl there, 
but before he could, another bullet went 
through his spine. Of course he hasn't any 
chance. Complete paralysis below the 
waist, and he will die within a few months.* 
A wounded German was brought into 
Montdidier to-day, who had some dum-dum 
bullets in his pockets. He had split the 
points of each bullet halfway down, so that 
it would fly into pieces when it struck 
anything. They stood him up against the 
wall in short order. 

*He died about January isth. 



iS8 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

December i8: 

Mr. Benjamin R. Allison is the author 
of a stirring piece of poetry, which he com- 
posed on night duty last ni^ht. It is en- 
titled Just Call an Aide^ and is as follows : 



If there's anything 
Beneath the sun 
Thou would'st have done, 
Just call an Aide. 

If in the morn for any cause 
Thou would'st arise 
E'er darkness flies, 
Just call an Aide. 

Or in the morn if water warm 
Thou'st none to shave, 
Don't be dismayed, 
Just call an Aide. 

Then when the patients all are fed. 
Their faces washed, and made their bed, 
The floors all scrubbed, and backs all rubbed, 
The dressings made, the lunch-times come, 
And still there's something left undone. 
Just call an Aide. 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 159 

Now, if a patient has colique 
And wants le Basin tres tres vite, 
What should he do? 
Just call an Aide. 

Or if the furnace fire is low 
And house gets cold, 
To make it go 
Just call an Aide. 

When Docs all sicken of their stunt 
Of exercising at the pump, 
And tank goes dry; what should they do? 
Just call an Aide. 

Or if there're bandages to burn, 

And the chauffeurs can't decide whose turn 

It is to do the job. 

Just call an Aide. 

And if the nurses want some wood, 
And cannot find their Mr. Goode, 
What must they do? 
Just call an Aide. 

Or if the chef should cook some meat 
Not fit for Soixante Quinze to eat, 
What? Waste it! No! 
Just call an Aide. 



i6o THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

Or when it's time to go to bed, 

And still a job there's left to do, 

Don't think that it is up to you — 

Instead 

Just call an Aide. 

Mr. Benjamin R. Allison also was this 
afternoon arrested as a German spy! Why? 
Oh, it was quite evident! He had his hair 
brushed like a German! Allison can't speak 
French and was marched down the streets of 
Montdidier between two soldiers, followed 
by a crowd of a hundred people. 

The fear of German spies has now reached 
such proportions, that the whole French na- 
tion is hysterical on the subject. Everyone 
is suspected of being a German spy! It 
would be as much as a man's life was worth 
now, to go into a restaurant and order beer 
and weiner schnitzel. He would probably 
be stood up in front of a firing squad, 
before he even had time to explain himself. 





1 j^^^^ v^iissi 


-v 




r 

i 

1 



A lesson in knitting — and incidentally in French too. 
of these Algerians can talk only Arabic. 



Most 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS i6i 

December 2^-26: 

Nothing doing until Christmas Eve, when 
we had a very pleasant party. We had 
some apple toddy for everyone before 
supper and then we all visited the wards, 
which the nurses had decorated very nicely, 
and the quartette, consisting of Cleveland, 
Allison, Pyle and myself rendered a few 
Christmas carols, including "Old Black 
Joe" and "The Marseillaise." The pa- 
tients enjoyed it hugely — all of them 
coming in strong on the last mentioned. 
There was only one really sick man in the 
chateau, and he was by himself. The others 
are all more or less convalescent, and are 
a pretty jovial lot. After a fine dinner 
served at seven, instead of six, we went 
up to the sitting room where W. unveiled 
a little Christmas tree, that Mr. and 
Mrs. Harjes had sent us, which had 



i62 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

very nice presents for everyone hung on 
it. 

Christmas Day was not very different 
from other days, excepting for a fine mid- 
day dinner. In the afternoon Miss L., 
Miss MacC. and I took the little car out 
to distribute small packages of candy to 
the children in the neighborhood, but we 
had no sooner started, when an order came 
to get out three ambulances for Breteuil. 
We took twenty-one "malades" over there, 
and had supper in a small cafe, with a genial 
party of French soldiers and gendarmes; lib- 
eral hot grog (which we certainly needed) 
and good song. A very pleasant evening. 

February 7; 

I arranged yesterday to go out to spend 
a day in the lines near X, and left bright 
and early in the little car. 




Lieutenant Bufquin, his wife, and Miss MacCullagh, on 
Christmas Day, 1914. He had been hngenng between hfe 
and death for six weeks. Kidney perforated and spinal 
column grazed. Recovered and discharged. 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 163 

At Gerbigny I met Captain Gain who 
was at our hospital. He commands the 
155 m.m. battery in front of the town, and 
he took me all over the French positions. 
Gerbigny is not in the best of repair, as 
every few days a big German shell arrives 
there, but no one seems to care much. I 
was most agreeably surprised to find how 
well organized and equipped the French 
artillery and infantry are in that neighbor- 
hood. The artillery is all marvellously 
hidden — you can go within 50 meters of a 
battery of four pieces without seeing them. 
I do not believe the Germans have an 
idea where the majority of them are. Some 
of the guns have been in the same position 
for three months. The French, on the other 
hand, seem to have the German positions 
located. They have splendid maps which 
the aeroplanes make of their trenches and 



i64 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

batteries. The Germans are not in a very 
good position, being all on a more or less 
level plain, whereas the French are splen- 
didly placed. First we went to a battery 
of four 155 m.m. cannon which were behind 
a steep hill with a marsh in their rear. It 
would be almost impossible to put a shell 
on them unless it came down vertically. 
They either hit on the top of the hill, or 
go over it into the marsh where they 
usually fail to explode. The guns are 
beautifully hidden by curtains of brush- 
wood, trees, etc. They are pointed very 
high in the air, an angle of 40° giving them 
their maximum range. They are sighted 
by knowing the angle made by a fixed point 
on their flank, their own position and the 
enemy's battery; they sight on the fixed 
point and adjust the guns accordingly. 
From each gun runs quite an elaborate little 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 165 

telephone system; It connects with every- 
thing, even wireless on the aeroplanes. 
This particular battery had seven "postes 
d'observation " to the front, which tele- 
phone them how their shells are going and 
correct their fire. We then went to a bat- 
tery of "120 m.m. long" cannon. They 
were in a wooded swamp and wonderfully 
hidden. You could stand within fifty yards 
of them, and not know there was anything 
there. This particular battery has been in 
position since November without the Ger- 
mans ever finding it. The quarters of the 
men were excellent, and they are very 
comfortable, well-made dug-outs and 
thatched shacks, and the insides perfectly 
dry. I was much impressed by the spirits 
of the men and their good condition; also 
their discipline; a sharp contrast to the 
slouchy reservists and stupid medical men 



1 66 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

at the rear. I took a good many photo- 
graphs, and we spent some time talking to 
the soldiers. 

Went back to lunch at Gerbignv with 
Captain Gain and his two lieutenants — all 
of them intelligent and agreeable. They 
told me some amusing stories of life in the 
trenches. 

At points where the trenches are very 
close together, they shoot messages over 
to each other with bows and arrows, and 
when there was snow they threw snowballs 
at each other; said that in one small village 
there were trenches on each side of the 
main street occupied by the French and 
Germans, and that chickens used to come 
and feed between them, and that both sides 
would throw out grain to them, to try to 
make them come near enough to be caught. 

At one place they said that a calf came 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 167 

walking along between the two lines. He 
was promptly transformed into a sieve. 
A German then jumped out of his trench 
waving a white handkerchief and ran for 
it, at which a Frenchman did the same 
thing. They both had a good-natured 
tussle for it and a boxing match, and finally 
ended up by cutting it in halves, and each 
taking a piece back to his comrades. 

Lieutenant Kula told me that In Belgium, 
they put their battery in a certain position 
and almost immediately the Germans located 
it and a dozen shells came right on top of 
them. They quickly moved to another 
place. The next morning bright and early, 
a dozen more shells landed within one 
hundred yards of them. 

*'Ah, mais c'etait tout a fait degoutant," 
said Kula. They had to move again. 

The next morning there was another 



i68 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

volley of shells right on the range! One 
of the men noticed a dead German lying 
on the field some distance from them and 
thought he saw him move. They investi- 
gated him. He was not dead nor wounded, 
and underneath him was a telephone! 
There he had been lying for three days 
correcting the fire of his friends. 

After lunch we again walked out along the 
river bottom toward Andichy, where the Ger- 
mans are, and inspected a new one hundred 
and fifty-five piece that had just been placed 
there to fire on a supply station that the Ger- 
mans had recently been working from. We 
then went up to a battery of four "soixante- 
quinze" guns, which were within two 
thousand yards of Andichy, or, rather, 
what is left of Andichy — for there is hardly 
a house standing. 

Throughout most of the afternoon there 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 169 

was a general exchange of artillery fire, and 
while we were there the Germans fired upon 
us; we replied, and I found myself in the 
middle of a real battle. Our battery was 
wonderfully hidden in a little ravine and 
had only been in position four days. It 
was just on the crest of a rise and hard to 
get at. The German battery we were at- 
tending to was in a small apple orchard 
just on the edge of Andichy. We could 
see their position easily. It was direct 
fire. There was no question about the su- 
periority of the marksmanship, and the 
greater effectiveness of the shells of the 
French battery. They poured shells into 
those Germans so fast, that they did not 
know whether they were going or coming; 
they can shoot twenty-six a minute with 
these guns and there were four of them. 
Four times twenty-six is one hundred and 



170 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

four, so it can be imagined what it was 
like. They say it is the best light field 
piece in the world. The recoil of these 
seventy-five millimeter guns is so perfectly 
absorbed by a special hydro-pneumatic 
cylinder, that it never has to be repointed 
after the first shot. They can stand a full 
glass of water on the wheel when they are 
firing, and not spill a drop. 

The German seventy-seven millimeter guns 
on the other hand jump slightly at each shot 
and have to be repointed. They can only 
fire six to seven shots a minute. We would 
fire steadily for ten seconds or so, and then 
stop and see what had happened. The 
Germans, I don't believe had more than 
two guns, and did not seem to be good 
shots. At any rate our volleys of shells 
made their fire very wild; some of their shots 
missed us by three hundred yards, and the 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 171 

closest they ever got was about one hundred 
yards. Their shells all exploded upon im- 
pact, and were not much good anyway. 
They were loaded only with ordinary powder 
and were not powerful. When they exploded 
they just sent up a little cloud of blue 
smoke, like an ordinary rock blasting 
charge, whereas the French shells, loaded 
with melinite, sent a column of black smoke 
fifty feet into the air, and tore up every- 
thing around them. Our first shot sent a 
tree down over one of the German pieces. 
At the end of three-quarters of an hour the 
German fire was silenced. I don't know 
what we accomplished. All I do know is 
that I should have hated to be in that 
orchard, where they were. The Germans 
are now using aluminum to make the screw 
heads for their shells. They are short of 
copper over there and have been requisl- 



172 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

tioning it everywhere. I picked up some 
pieces, and the officers told me about it. 

Afterwards we sneaked up along the side 
of a hill and got up on a ridge to the right 
where we were about one thousand and two 
hundred yards from the German trenches; 
one could see wonderfully from that point, 
— the trenches of both sides right in front of 
us with both batteries firing and the shells 
bursting. There are about six hundred 
yards between the French and German 
trenches here. The German infantry, how- 
ever, saw us and kept shooting at us, so 
we had to get out after a few minutes. 

The men's quarters and commissary are 
wonderful; regular underground palaces, 
with sculpture of "Guillaume le Cochon" 
and Queens from Montmartre done in mud, 
that ought to go in the Louvre after the 
war is over. 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 173 

I was much impressed again by the good 
spirits of the men and their condition and 
healthy look. "Oui, ils sont tres gais dans 
les tranchees," said the captain; and they 
are I 

The officers' quarters, general mess, ravi- 
taillement, etc., are just around the corner 
of the hill where the "soixante-quinze" bat- 
tery was; they again are almost impossible 
to hit, unless a shell is dropped vertically on 
them. The shells either land on the crest of 
the hill or else just miss, and go two hundred 
yards into the valley below. They have 
been there for three months and the place is 
like an Adirondack summer resort. They live 
in luxury. Brick walks, flowers, terraces, 
rustic benches, etc. The Commandant has 
a little Italian pergola which he has biiilt 
out of odds and ends of stuffs, a telephone, 
an iron bedstead, and, in fact, everything 



174 THE AFTERMATH OF BATTLE 

that goes to make life comfortable, and 
right over the crest of the hill, fifty yards 
from his house, are big holes from the shells 
in every direction. 

I talked to the Commandant and some 
of his officers and they again were intelli- 
gent and very agreeable. 

During the afternoon I saw a couple of men 
working in the field when a shell dropped 
fifty yards from them. They just looked up 
at it and then continued with their work. 

I stayed out there until it was dark, and 
then went back and took my automobile 
for Montdidier. It was a most interesting 
day, and the captain said that I was very 
lucky to see so much firing. All the way 
between X and Y there are secondary 
trenches all ready for the artillery, bomb 
proof, etc. The impression that I carried 
away with me was good. 



HARJES AMBULANCE CORPS 175 

I was also surprised and pleased to find 
that the Germans were not so terrible as 
I had thought. 

The defence of modern warfare is so 
much stronger than the offence that it is 
simply suicide to advance, but generally- 
speaking the French seem to be the stronger, 
here at X. I should say they could hold 
the Germans indefinitely. 

Modern warfare is a good deal more a 
question of ammunition and equipment, 
than of men. A couple of machine guns 
in a trench are as good as a regiment. 
How long it will last, is not for me to say; 
it seems to be an absolute standoflF all along 
the western front. 

Some social, or economic development, 
I believe will be more likely to end it, than 
actual fighting. 

Printed in the United States of America. 



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gestive survey. 

"Owen Wister has depicted the tragedy of Germany and 
has hinted at the possible tragedy of the United States. . . . 
We wish it could be read in full by every American." — The 
Outlook. 

Russia and the World 

By STEPHEN GRAHAM 

Author of "With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem," "With 

Poor Immigrants to America," etc. 

Illustrated, cloth, 8vo, $2.00 

At the outbreak of the present European war Mr. Graham 
was in Russia, and his book opens, therefore, with a descrip- 
tion of the way the news of war was received on the Chinese 
frontier, one thousand miles from a railway station, where he 
happened to be when the Tsar's summons came. Following 
this come other chapters on Russia and the War, considering 
such questions as, Is It a Last War?, Why Russia Is Fighting, 
The Economic Isolation of Russia, An Aeroplane Hunt at 
Warsaw, Suffering Poland: A Belgium of the East, and The 
Soldier and the Cross. 

"It shows the author creeping as near as he was allowed to 
the firing Une." — London Times. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

PubUshers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



A Journal of Impressions in 
Belgium 

By may SINCLAIR 

Author of "The Three Sisters," "The Return of the Prodigal," 

etc. 

Cloth^ i2mo, $1.50 

Here is recorded the story of the effect of the war 
on the celebrated English novelist. Miss Sinclair 
went to the front with a field ambulance corps and 
in this journal she tells what her impressions were 
of the things she saw and experienced. It is not 
so much a war book as it is a May Sinclair book, the 
revelation of the mental condition which the ter- 
rible conflict produced upon one of the great literary 
minds of the day. 

The journal covers the most tragic period of the 
invasion, the seventeen days between Septem- 
ber 25th and October 13, 1914. Miss Sinclair in 
her introduction says, "Each day of the seventeen 
had its own quality and was soaked in its own at- 
mosphere; each had its own unique and incor- 
ruptible memory. ... I have set down the day's 
crude emotion in all its crudity, rather than taint 
its reality with the discreet reflections that came 
after." 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



With the Russian Army 

By ROBERT R. McCORMICK 

Illustrated, i2mo, $2.00 

This book deals with the author's experiences in 
the war area. The work traces the cause of the 
war from the treaty of 1878 through the Balkan 
situation. It contains many facts drawn from per- 
sonal observation, for Major McCormick has had 
opportunities such as have been given to no other 
man during the present engagements. He has been 
at the various headquarters and actually in the 
trenches. One of the most interesting chapters of 
the volume is the concluding one dealing with great 
personalities of the war from first-hand acquaintance. 

The work contains a considerable amount of 
material calculated to upset generally accepted 
ideas, comparisons of the fighting forces, and much 
else that is fresh and original. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

PubUshers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



The Military Unpreparedness of 
the United States 

By FREDERIC L. HUIDEKOPER 

Maps, 8vo, $4.00 
Preparedness is one of the vital issues of the day. 
It will be a vital issue in years to come. No unin- 
formed person has a right to hold opinions, whether 
antagonistic or confident, as to the policies of his 
government. Frederic Louis Huidekoper of Wash- 
ington, who is perhaps the foremost authority on 
military topics in the United States, has written a 
book, "The MiUtary Unpreparedness of the United 
States," which is an authoritative commentary on 
the history of the United States Army from Colonial 
times to the present, with expert analysis of the 
tactical significance of the handling of the forces 
in the field and of the military policy of the govern- 
ment. Historians of former wars have placed em- 
phasis on the glories of our victories; there have 
been but few courageous truth-seekers to draw 
lessons from our defeats. Mr. Huidekoper has been 
studying our military blunders with a view to the 
measures which are necessary to prevent them in 
the future. 

" The author has performed potentially one of the 
greatest services to the nation that lie within mortal power. 
His knowledge of the subject is encyclopedic. His logic is 
impregnable and irresistible. His facts are beyond con- 
troversy. We could wish that every American citizen who 
is intellectually capable of thought and reason and who 
is morally capable of patriotism might carefully read and 
ponder every word of this book." — New York Tribune, 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue N^w Yock 



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